Michael Bormann – Capture The Moment

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AOR Heaven
Produced by Michael Bormann

German rock vocalist Michael Bormann spent several years fronting Jaded Heart, but split with the rest of the band in 2004. Capture The Moment is his second solo album to date and neatly avoids most of the typical melodic rock pitfalls.

Indeed Bormann hasn’t made an album over-saturated with keyboards, relegated the guitar riffs to the background, or recorded too many ballads. The brilliant piano and acoustic guitar intro to Bormann’s powerful Steve Lee-esque start to the excellent Push Comes To Shove works perfectly before it becomes a strong-but-slow rocker with a strongly Deep Purple influenced bridge a la Perfect Strangers.

Friends For A Lifetime follows a similar Gotthard/Bonfire format to good effect, then Come Take Me Higher is pure Def Leppard with a harder guitar sound and Live Your Life (and later I Will Hold The Line) is a full-on upbeat Gotthard-style rocker.

Far from sappy AOR even ballads I Wanna Hear Your Voice maintains enough integrity to earn it’s place on a genuinely hard rock record. However, the same cannot be said of Love Is Magic, with every instrument played by Bormann, which is much closer to how Def Leppard really sound. But the pace is regained after ordinary rock track Glory & Pain (guest appearance from Edenbridge‘s Sabine Edelsbacher on vocals and Lanvall on guitar) with Don’t Bother Me, a tough rocker with additional vocals from Sonja Rippelmeier and the grooving Doing Or Not, featuring nomadic guitarist Tommy Denander, which drips Whitesnake.

The end of the disc is a little weaker than some of the rest. Still Haven’t Found It is a unremarkable ballad, For Just A Little While, the second song to feature Denander, is an ordinary upbeat rocker, and Go, Going, Gone is a Bryan Adams-like acoustic ballad (ending an album on a ballad is never a good idea).

For a melodic rock album much of this is a tough as it gets, and it maintains a much higher level of authenticity because of this. An authenticity which is compounded when you read the liner notes and see that Bormann plays all of the bass and all of the drums on the whole album, as well as singing. Even if you’re not normally an AOR fan, give this one a shot. Don’t expect Journey, and don’t expect Dio, but something in between.

“ genuinely hard rock ”

Tracklist: When Push Comes To Shove / Friends For A Lifetime / Come Take Me Higher / Live Your Life / I Wanna Hear Your Voice / Half Way Down / I Will Hold The Line / Love Is Magic / Glory & Pain / Don’t Bother Me / Doing Or Not / Still Haven’t Found It / For Just A Little While / Go, Going, Gone

Written by Andy Lye
More: Albums, Hard Rock, Michael Bormann