By JAY ROBERTS
The Cassette Chronicles is a continuing series of mini reviews and reflections on albums from the 1980’s and 1990’s. The aim of this series is to highlight both known and underappreciated albums from rock, pop and metal genres from this time period through the cassette editions of their releases. Some of the albums I have known about and loved for years, while others are new to me and were music I’ve always wanted to hear. There will be some review analysis and my own personal stories about my connection with various albums. These opinions are strictly my own and do not reflect the views of anyone else at Limelight Magazine.
DORO – FORCE MAJEURE (1989)
After the Warlock band ceased to exist over legal disputes regarding the ownership of the name, singer Doro Pesch forged ahead with a solo career that is still going strong all these decades later.
Force Majeure, Doro’s first solo album came out in February 1989 and after becoming a fan with the Warlock album Triumph and Agony, I was completely on board with this next offering featuring my rock and roll crush back when I was a young and dumb senior in high school.
The album actually kicks off with a cover song. This was a first for Doro and she chose an interesting song to cover with Procol Harum’s “A White Shade of Pale”. I’ve heard both versions of the song and while this is a fine cover (and certainly more of a heavier rock sounding version here), I’m not sure this was the best way for Doro to kick off her solo album. Again, it isn’t a knock on the song but if I’m making my way on my own, the last thing I’d want to do is start off by doing someone else’s song as the lead track (and first single) on the album.
The album kicks off in earnest after that cover with the song “Save My Soul”. The song is a still powerful hard rocking gem in my book to say the least. And it helps start to explain why I’ve been such a devoted fan of Doro’s all these years.
Her voice is just freaking amazing. She can rip your throat out with a razor sharp scream, fire out lyrics with rapid fire delivery and yet as the other songs side one of Force Majeure so amply demonstrate, she can delivery a stunningly beautiful and ethereally delicate vocal performance as well.
The song “Hellraiser kicks off with a kind of Gothic-inspired feel that keys into the overall sound of the track. The song has a far more deliberate pacing except for the brief lead into the chorus where it picks up a bit before settling back down. I loved the whole vibe of the song.By the way, the song is listed as being on Side Two of the album on the Wikipedia page but it is on Side One of my cassette. I wonder if there are two versions of the album and that accounts for the way it is listed online.
For the song “Mission Of Mercy”, the slow build of the music and vocals until it explodes for the track’s chorus was really cool. I don’t mind saying that I was singing along as I listened to the song and even caught myself making the devil horns sign as I was doing so. Well, at least until I realized I was doing it and stopped. Still, this is a killer track.
For a more full-on hard rocking song, you can’t go wrong with “Angels with Dirty Faces”. It’s rocket ride of shredding music that just blows the doors off the place from start to finish.
But its the final song on on Side One that brings forth that stunning beauty I was talking about earlier. The song is called “Beyond the Trees” and it is pretty much just the piano/keyboards with Doro’s vocals. It is an absolutely beautiful song, a ballad that while shirking the lovey-dovey aspects of the style, stands out so perfectly. I remember being blown away the first time I heard it and I still think of the song in that respect every time I hear it. Doro has recorded a lot of ballads over the years but this one is always going to be one of my most favorite ones.
You get a trio of hard driving rockers to open things up the second side of the album. While I was listening to the songs for this article, I was struck by the notion that this was almost like a trilogy of violence. First you get punched in the face with “Hard Times” (which was the 2nd and final single from Force Majeure), then you get kicked in the teeth by “World Gone Wild”. That song seemed to be a relentless sonic attack in terms of the fire and fury it had fueling the music and the way Doro delivered the vocals. By the way, “World Gone Wild” was the song that seems to have swapped places with “Hellraiser” in the track listing for the album.
Finally, you get kicked in the groin with “I Am What I Am”, which is even more of a blazing rocker as Doro serves up a machine gun vocal track for a song that is just barely over two-and-a-half minutes in length. The lyrics definitely stand out as a declarative statement from Doro as well.
The way those three songs hit you over and over again, when you get to the song “Cry Wolf”, you need the musical respite it provides as the music downshifts just a bit. The song moves a lot slower in the main lyrical passages though it does get much more of a fuller sound for the roar of the chorus.
That respite is short-lived though because the song “Under the Gun” is pretty much a companion piece to “I Am What I Am” in terms of an unleashed force of furious heavy metal. Bobby Rondinelli’s drums are particularly powerful in powering the music of this song and again, Doro just rips your throat out with her vocal delivery.
“River of Tears” doesn’t have the same kind of Gothic thrust like “Hellraiser” but it does have the same kind of storytelling feel to it. Much like “Cry Wolf”, the song starts off in more of a midtempo delivery before things get heavier for the chorus and towards the end of the track as a whole.
The album closes out with a brief (just 36 seconds) a capella vocal from Doro. She’s singing in German (which is a tradition for her albums). It’s called “Bis Aufs Blut” which translates apparently to “Till It Bleeds”. I love this song short but because of how special it sounds, I’ve never bothered to see how the rest of the lyrics translate. I’m happy to leave it undiscovered so it doesn’t change the “magic” of the song for me.
Over the many years I’ve been a fan of Doro Pesch, I’ve seen her twice in concert and got to meet her after the second show. Hell, the profile photo on my Facebook page is a photo of the two of us. Even when she didn’t have US distribution for her albums, I would buy them through import companies. She’s long been my choice for “Metal Queen” and the Force Majeure album does a great job of letting listeners discover the wide tapestry of Doro’s talents to say the least. This is an album I love to pop in every so often. It reminds me of just how much I love her music and why.
NOTES OF INTEREST: Despite being packed with 13 tracks and being just a really damn fine album, Force Majeure had just about zero commercial success in the US when it was released. It peaked at #154 on the album chart. It apparently sold a lot better in Europe though.
While bassist Tommy Henriksen had 5 co-writing credits on the album, guitarist Jon Levin’s sole songwriting credit is for co-writing the song “Under the Gun”. In a way, that’s too bad because his playing on the album is intense. Also, Levin’s last name is incorrectly spelled as “Devin” on the album’s liner notes. The majority of the songwriting for Force Majeure was otherwise done by Doro Pesch and Joey Balin. Balin also produced and arranged the album.
Drummer Bobby Rondinelli, who rounded out the recording lineup for the album, has played with Rainbow, Scorpions and others across his lengthy career. The keyboards were played by former Dio keyboardist Claude Schnell who is credited as an “additional musician”.
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