It's no small feat releasing your thirty-first album. After 40 years together, PICTURE has released their next album, "Wings". It's a solid album; it holds to its aesthetic, but I think it plays it safe, making it a good, but not great, album. The opening track lets you know right off the bat that this is 80s Heavy Metal. The melody change at 0:34 is interesting, as well as the vintage VAN HALEN vibe the track has, from the vocalist to the instrumentals to the production quality. Overall, it's a solid song within genre conventions. The machine gun riff is catchy, the guitar solo shows good technique, and it's a good song.

The title track sounds boring thematically. It's got a nice, steady beginning, but the vocalist sounds tired, not relaxed, but like he took an Ambien and he's ready to float to bed. While I can appreciate a simple song - and this song is as simple as it gets, no bells and whistles, no harmony play, just a beat, a riff, and a vocalist - it doesn't soar, and it's hard to capture that feeling of flying away when the singer sounds bored. "Little Annie" has some more bite to it. I like the blues influence of the song. The next song, "Is It Real", is also faster and has a lot of Punk overtones. The grittier style of the vocalist does really well here.

The next songs are good thematically, and I enjoy the complex riff at the beginning of "Blown Away". Complex is a relative term, so it's still a simple song; the guitar solo even continues the same melody until halfway through, which isn't a bad thing. This is just the band's style, and whether you like it boils down to personal preference. The seventh track, "Empty Room", is my favorite. It starts as a slow ballad then gallops into an intense riff. Lyrically, it shows angst rather than tells it, and it creates a cool, gothic atmosphere. I enjoyed the choral call-and-response, and the climbing chords in the guitar solo are nothing short of beautiful. It speeds up in the middle and leads up to a frenzied solo and refrain.

The next song is solid, featuring a longer-than-usual intro. Again, it's a simple, solid song, nothing groundbreaking, not a standout. The vocals can get blurry, fuzzing out the lyrical content; since this is a story song about a guy who gives everything to a girl who is never satisfied, it needs to be clearer. "Still Standing" has some good call-and-response elements in it and some good thematic choices. I wish it were a little stronger to convey the message of a band that's still going after decades.

Finally, the closing song, "Stroke", is the only longer song on the album. It has a strong riff, but I'm feeling some vocal disharmony between the lyrics and the guitars. There's a long, narrative solo featuring some ambient dialogue, narrative and instrumentals that build to an anthemic "fight, fight" chant. While I enjoyed the positive message about pressing on, mainly because it helped with my anxiety-inducing weekend, the song overall was all right, not great. Overall, I could describe the album the same way. It's solid, simple, but it plays it too safe at times. I have nothing against simple songs; the world needs them, and it adds up to personal taste at the end of the day. However, I didn't feel like the album pushed the envelope from good to great.