One challenge that most artists/bands usually face in the industry these days is keeping their material fresh and unique. With so much competition on the scene, trying to not make your material sound the same as all the others is always going to be hard, but if you put a bit of effort into it you can pull it of, be it adjusting your sound or a constant rotation of members. Once you find your own unique way of adjusting your sound to make it your own, then the world is your oyster as they say, and we can apply this theory to the band in this review, IVANHOE.

Formed in 1986, this group certainly have plenty of experience and talent under their belts with all the years they have been together. They are also diverse in their talent in a way as the line up is constantly rotating meaning you never get the same musicians for each album and that in a way makes them unique.

From 1988-1992 they release three demo taps before releasing their debut album in 1994. Since then they have released 5 more albums but that number soon becomes 6 with the release of their new CD "7 Days" which is the groups 7^th studio album and the remainder of this review is my general thoughts on what I think about this album and the way it sounds.

Clocking in at around 57 minutes across 12 songs, the new album from IVANHOE starts with a short instrumental called "Alert" before launching into the first vocal song "Light Up In The Darkness". After that there are 9 more new songs with a bonus track slapped on the end. The opening tracks aren't bad, but they don't get the album off to a good start for me as they just seem to lack any real oomph or power in the music. Fortunately things improve at the halfway point with the song "Innocent" as we are treated to some beautiful piano melodies and soulful vocals with the occasional electric guitar melodies in the background.

But come the title track I reach the point where I was hoping that the overall feel of the music would improve but, alas, it doesn't as the songs just seem to lack any real feel or power, resulting in some - dare I say - boring sounding songs. It's not a term I like to use as it seems like I'm insulting the music and the band, but to me, that is genuinely what it feels like as I wasn't really feeling it as the songs just seemed to drag on.

For example, the title track is the longest on the album and it takes ages to get going, as for the first 3 minutes it's just music and then the vocals kick in for the remaining 5 minutes. Because it takes so long to kick in, you inevitably get to a point where you start wondering if the wait for the music to get going and get good is worth it. And, well, it doesn't - and it's not. It's not just the music though, which sounds lifeless to me, but it's also the production that sounds quite cheap which may be a part of the reason why the music lacks any feel, as you feel like the engineer got bored when mixing it.

Bottom line, "7 Days" by IVANHOE is an album that didn't really impress me that much as there's a lot wrong with it and it just fails to tick any boxes with me. I don't know if I can call it outright bad, but this one really did nothing for me.