James Christian is/was the lead vocalist with House of Lords and Meet The Man is rapid follow up to his first solo album Rude Awakening (10 years ago!). Unfortunately I have not not had the chance to Chritsian's latest work on the recent House Of Lords album The Power & The Myth  due to the fact that it got very poor reviews to say the least. (Editor's Note: Our reviewer like the album and the review can be checked out via this link). However Christian's last solo effort 'Rude Awakening' whilst a brilliant album was quite down beat in nature and really only contained two upbeat numbers, in the shape of 'Best Girl' and 'Don’t Start Me Up' and I think this reviewer was one of the few who actually enjoyed his acoustic set at the Gods in 1995. 'Meet The Man' though is quite the opposite in terms of its make up and proves to be a lot more upbeat in nature.

'Meet The Man' opens with 'After The Love Has Gone' (not the ten track!) and was co-written with House of Lords guitarist Lanny Cordola and in all truthfulness has sounds like an outtake from the first House of Lords album. The album then continues with 'Know You In The Dark', which is a good up tempo rock song, but Bon Jovi fans may recognize the riff that starts 22 seconds into the track! next up is 'Surrender Your Love' which is the first ballad on the album and is reminiscent of 'Brighter Day' from Rude Awakening (also on the first Steel house lane album)

Running through the rest of the tracks on the album:

Track 4 is the title track, 'Meet The Man' and reminds one of  Whitesnake's 'Still Of The Night'  at the start and then turns into mid tempo track.
'End Of Time could easily have been lifted form Rude Awakening (WILL SOMEBODY TELL ME WERE THIS SONG HAS BEEN BEFORE?)
'Love Looked Into My Life is the power ballad of the album and reminds me a little of 'Love Don’t Lie'  from the debut House of Lords album.
'Leave Well Enough Alone' is an AOR by the numbers track but when it’s this well done who cares! especially as it features such a heavy riff.
'Strong Enough' was written by Stan Bush, as was the afore mentioned Love Don’t Lie,  but unlike that particular track is quite up-tempo.
'You Should Be Blue (All I Could Feel Was Blue)' is another typical James Christian rocker which certainly went down well with this reviewer and track ten 'Circle Of Tears' once again sounds like an outtake from Rude Awakening.
Rounding out the album we have 'Hold Back The Night', which starts off acoustically and builds and builds and builds to a massive finale. This is another song  co-written by Lanny Cordola and could have fitted easily onto the second HOL album Sahara.

As can been seen from the credits Frontiers favourite Fabrizio Grossi has been heavily involved with this album, but here his input is slightly different to projects such as From The Inside etc, due to the fact that the songs on the 'Meet The Man' have been written or co-written in the main by James Christian himself (except were noted) and  Grossi has only overseen the music being re-recorded from the original demos, as well as playing keyboards and bass. As with many Frontiers releases at present Christian recorded his vocals separately from the music at his home studio and, as his missus is none other than Robin Beck (from 'Firts Time' fame), she provides many of the backing vocals on the record.

In my humble opinion this the joint second best release that Fabrizio Grossi has been involved with (In first place is the Starbreaker album and joint second is the Danny Vaughn fronted From The Inside). In short if this album had been released sometime around 1989-90 it would have been huge. However in this day and age it will probably be quickly forgotten, (It was only released last October and there's barely been any more mention of it since.) which is a shame as this is a truly brilliant album and gets 8.5/10 from this reviewer and may even grow to 9.0 with time.

I would heartily recommend this album to all HOL and James Christian fans and any fans of lat 80’s melodic rock.

Right now where’s my James Christian t-shirt?

Let us know your views on 'Meet The Man'

Track List

After The Love Has Gone
Know You In The Dark
Surrender Your Love
Meet The Man
End Of Time
Love Looked Into My Life
Leave Well Enough Alone
Strong Enough
You Should Be Blue (All I Could Feel Was Blue)
Circle Of Tears
Hold Back The Night

Line  Up

James Christian - Vocals
JM Scattolin - Guitars
Roberto Vanni - Guitars
Biggs Brice - Drums
Fabrizio Grossi - Bass/Keyboards