THE SKELTERS are a Greek group of Hard Rockers who have been together for some 29 years, since 1996. Only, people who saw them between 1996 and 2001 will remember them as THE CRICKETS, before they changed their name to the current one. To be exact, the name is in use for that long, because according to the information that came with the music the band have a new line-up for “Con Man's Chronicles”, their third studio album to date. But when I look up the changes, the only one that is not an original member is the multi-instrumentalist Kostis Vogiatzoglou. The other two, Angel Harvits and Daniel Haravitsidis, are founding members of the band. I have to say that as a band they’re not exactly productive, as the first two albums were released way back in 2009 (“Explain To Me”) and 2016 (“Revive”).

This is Hard Rock at best, but it is the variety that will transport you back to the seventies in sound as well as atmosphere and feel. That can be a good thing nowadays, as it gives the whole listening experience a much more analogue and therefore honest approach. In that respect THE SKELTERS got everything just right. But whereas the bands in the seventies were able to stand out or not, was due to the fact that they either made good music or that they only wrote mediocre or even inferior songs. I have to say that in my view “Con Man's Chronicles” would have passed by most of the audience without even a flinch. Not because the music is bad or inferior, but it is unremarkable, has no outstanding or redeeming features that is able to lift them above a lot of the other bands and/or albums of the time.

And then you translate that to the current times, with the constant avalanche of release being dumped onto the audience every week. Even though THE SKELTERS has a solid foundation in how they write and play songs, they all lack that one thing that makes music stand out; emotion and expression. To me “Con Man's Chronicles” just sounds flat, like going through the motions because they have to. and like I said, what THE SKELTERS do isn’t that bad, but they do need to have a good think about what kind of sound and therefore production they are aiming for. I’m afraid that only the true seventies afficionados will know how to fully appreciate “Con Man's Chronicles”.