Last week I got two albums of Mr. J.R. Blackmore, yes indeed, the son of Mr. Ritchie Blackmore, `Still Holding On` (Remastered) and `Between Darkness & Light`. The last one is reviewed on Rockezine separately.
`Still Holding On` was released originally in 1990, Blackmore wrote the songs together with his friend Malte Rathke. He thought the album was never released, till he discovered the album in a record shop. The band never got a penny and decided to record the album again, totally remastered which makes the sound really great. So 16 years after the original `Still Holding On` the remastered version is released.

To be honest I didn’t know what I had to expect of the CD’s of Blackmore junior. I expected songs based on the Rainbow period, my expectations ran high though, when I played the album in my cd-player. The first song (`Wild And Free`) sounds very familiar, it also could be named `Spotlight Kid`, a famous Rainbow song from the album Difficult To Cure.

Even the guitar solo has a lot of similarities with this Rainbow song. The other songs don’t have as much similarities as `Wild and Free`, but they do have the same tone of the band Rainbow, although the songs are a little bit heavier. I’m not complaining about that at all, I think the J.R. Blackmore Group is doing a great job.
Still Holding On (Remastered) contains up-tempo songs, ballads, some classical influences and catchy hard rock songs. The vocals (Michael Bormann) are great, he has a powerful hard rock voice that fits with all the types of songs. The guitar riffs are rather heavy, almost all solo’s are guitar solo’s, the keyboards are very important for the melodic sound, not much solo’s, but they are always audible. Favourite songs are `Wild And Free`, `Tonight` (great intro). The album doesn’t have any weak songs.