For most of us music is something more than just buying a CD or listening to something when we are (for example) cooking, having sex or playing Football Manager 2009. It's a part of our lives and for some of us it is life itself. And it's nice to see an individual or a band promote their own self release albums.

But unfortunately, I am here to say my opinion for any release by what I'm listening and not being romantic and think: Hey this guy/band made all he/they could to release something. Let's put a good grade. So, here is this self-released album from Calie Cox, an one man band. Coming from Sacramento U.S.A, as someone can read on his MySpace page, he is saying that he recorded two albums back in the 90's, without giving any other details, and that he founded three bands in the past, which if you are not from Sacramento you wouldn't know them for sure, and had two of his songs in airplay on a local radio station.

Obvious is one of the two projects that Colia is working on this period of time. His music is melodic Hard Rock with minor fragments of  Prog Rock. Listening to the CD the sound will bring in mind something like RUSH and that's probably because his voice is near Geddy Lee's (what do you mean who is he?). The first three songs are quite nice and someone could say that his is a quite good guitar player. But on the same time this is a step back, since most of the compositions give the feeling that their only purpose of existence is for Colie's solos.  Furthermore, the ballads in this album are quite boring and have nothing to give. I won't say anything new since Cox himself says that this album is to bring the old sound back.

As you probably noted so far, I wasn't impressed by this release. It has some nice songs like Sing For Tomorrow and Is It Me?, but the other songs are mediocre and the overall result is nothing special. If the compositions were not that long and had better orchestrations with out having in mind just the solos, it would have been better.