Pushking – The World As We Love It

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Produced by Fabrizio Grossi

Russian rock outfit Pushking have been around for a long time now, releasing 15 albums in their home country and achieving nationwide success, but barely getting any recognition at all everywhere else, and so far never releasing any of their records internationally.

The band’s management, in an attempt to get Pushking noticed outside of Russia, put together a promo package and sent it to producers all over the World. Fabrizio Grossi liked what he heard and put together a home-made compilation of his favourite Pushking songs to play to all of his musician contacts. The World As We Love It was Grossi’s resulting idea, an album of re-recordings of the tracks from his compilation packed with guests. The finished album includes 19 songs, 18 of which have a guest vocalist taking lead vocals, with Pushking singer Konstantin Shustarev, appears to be a very versatile singer, at times wailing like Halford, at others crooning like Coverdale, joining in at various points. The only song not to feature a vocal guest is the deeply personal but not particularly inspiring My Reflections After Seeing The “Schindler’s List” Movie, where Steve Vai anonymously helps out on guitar.

Album highlights include ZZ Top‘s Billy F. Gibbons rocking hard on Nightrider, and to a lesser extent on It’ll Be OK with help from Extreme guitarist Nuno Bettencourt, ex-Rainbow singer Joe Lynn Turner and Norwegian vocal hero Jorn Lande enjoying grooving stand-outs Head Shooter and Heroin respectively, and KISS front-man Paul Stanley turning in a great performance alongside guitar virtuoso Stevie Salas to save what would probably otherwise be a weak song in Cut The Wire.

Elsewhere, similar to Stanley, some good performances make ordinary songs enjoyable. Ex-Uriah Heep man John Lawton teams up with Billy Idol‘s guitar player Steve Stevens for Stranger’s Song which sounds more suited to Alice Cooper, who instead appears on middle-of-the-road track Troubled Love with his guitarist Keri Keli, and Glenn Hughes contributes his voice to three tracks, hauling in Black Country Communion band-mate Joe Bonamassa on Tonight and Moonstone Project mastermind Matt Filippini on Private Own (lacklustre Why Don’t You? being the third track).

It’s not all good news though. Graham Bonnet sounds atrocious on God Made Us Free, great singers like Jeff Scott Soto and Mr. Big‘s Eric Martin can do nothing to help I Believe and Open Letter To God, Nazareth‘s Dan McCafferty sounds past his best on horrible ballad I Love You and My Simple Song, and U.D.O./ex-Accept legend Udo Dirkschneider is completely out of place on Nature’s Child. The less said about silly finalé Kukarracha, where Stanley, Hughes, Martin, Bonnet and Turner are joined by Toto guitarist Steve Lukather, the better.

The good outweighs the bad and for 80 minutes The World As We Love It provides a lot of fun, upbeat rock music that would otherwise probably go unheard outside of Russia. The plethora of familiar voices, the majority of which doing admirable jobs, should be enough to hook plenty of classic rock fans in.

“ good performances make ordinary songs enjoyable ”

Tracklist: Intro / Nightrider (featuring Billy F. Gibbons) / It’ll Be OK (featuring Billy F. Gibbons, Nuno Bettencourt) / Troubled Love (featuring Alice Cooper, Keri Kelli) / Stranger’s Song (featuring John Lawton, Steve Stevens) / Cut The Wire (featuring Paul Stanley, Stevie Salas) / My Reflections After Seeing The “Schindler’s List” Movie (featuring Steve Vai) / God Made Us Free (featuring Graham Bonnet) / Why Don’t You? (featuring Glenn Hughes) / I Believe (featuring Jeff Scott Soto) / Tonight (featuring Glenn Hughes, Joe Bonamassa) / Private Own (featuring Glenn Hughes, Matt Filippini) / Open Letter To God (featuring Eric Martin) / Nature’s Child (featuring Udo Dirkschneider) / I Love You (featuring Dan McCafferty) / Head Shooter (featuring Joe Lynn Turner) / Heroin (featuring Jorn Lande) / My Simple Song (featuring Dan McCafferty) / Kukarracha (featuring Joe Lynn Turner, Eric Martin, Glenn Hughes, Paul Stanley, Graham Bonnet, Steve Lukather)

Written by Andy Lye
More: 2011, Albums, Hard Rock, Pushking