Gino Naschke (voc) Oliver Scheer (g) Steve Lagleder (b) Michael Mehl (dr) Axel Hoffmann (keys)
Surprise, surprise...
it wasn´t really fine-art acoustic guitar-picking the five rockers of Châlice have been famous for up to now. They´ve always been fond of great melodies however, but usually they took your speakers to the limits when you were listening to „Shotgun Alley“ and its four predecessors.
But what the hell is this?
Suddenly they come unplugged, which means warm acoustic guitars instead of distortion-excesses, strange percussion-toys instead of the well-known heavy drums, a real piano instead of keyboards...
And the songs?
Somehow familiar and yet totally different, sometimes rolling and grooving like the opener „Body and Soul“ (who remembers the rather straight original on „Chameleonation“?), sometimes soft and fragile like the wonderful „Somewhere“ (familiar to the fans since the early days from the 1998-opus „Persistence of Time“), sometimes even with a jazzy touch and enriched with a real brass section like the lately melancholic „Turn Into“ (one of the all-time classics from „Chameleonation“), or sometimes just rocked along with the typical Châlice charm like „Hollywood Daze“ or „Kick It“ from the „Shotgun Alley“-album, not to forget its title-song which also was refined in a very special way.
What is the concept of „BARE“?
„It is meant as a little „Thank You“ to our true fans“, singer Gino Naschke explains. „We´ve always been playing little acoustic sets during our shows and these acoustic parts seemed to somehow touch the souls of the listeners. Since years and years they´ve been begging us to make a whole album out of this, and we finally surrendered in the end“, main songwriter and guitarist Oliver Scheer adds. And so they´ve been wandering through their own history as they entered the HASTINGS-studio in Hamburg for a long weekend to find out if the magic the fans were expecting would really appear.
And?
„We were totally surprised how good it sounds“, says Steve Lagleder, bass guitarist and once again also second acoustic guitar player. „We had great emotional moments giving new life to the old stuff and suddenly realising how cool it is to play –hopefully- straight into the hearts of the people with some pure and simple instruments. And with „I´ll be there“ we´ve even been writing one brand-new song for this session.“ Alright, and if everything is so fantastic, why does this album appear just now, more than ten years after the beginning of the „unplugged-boom“? „Because we are some pig-headed fellows who always cared more about their own visions than about the so-called business-rules“, laughs Gino, the shouter. „To be honest, this whole unplugged-hype was getting on our nerves for quite a long time. We just did not want to do what everyone else was doing!“ And that´s how they´ve always been, the sympathetic guys from Hamburg city.
So what about the next plans? Time to sit back and relax?
Of course not!
„Sure we want to go on tour with the new album“, Oliver Scheer says, „this is going to be really exciting, and one good reason is that we can show what a brilliant piano-player our new keyboarder Axel Hoffmann is! However, I would not completely deny that we might take one or two electric guitars with us...“
One last thing should be mentioned:
Just like on „SHOTGUN ALLEY“, where they added a second CD („Best Of“) without raising the price, they show themselves generously again on „BARE“: in addition to the new recordings you find nearly all the stuff they had recorded with acoustic guitars in the earlier days, left in the original versions! This makes a nice contrast to the new recordings and proves again that they´ve never forgotten to whom they owe everything and especially this album: to their indefatigable and incredible fans!
CHÂLICE were founded in the early Nineties. The direction that Gino Naschke, Oliver Scheer, Steve Lagleder, Michael Mehl and their erstwhile keyboarder took from the beginning was grooving melodic metal with international appeal. The band came to the public’s attention for the first time on a rock sampler in 1993, playing with Steve Lukather (Toto), Asia, Virgin Steele and Alannah Miles in spring 1994, and releasing their debut, In Wonderland, one year later. Their second album, Persistence Of Time, was recorded in autumn 1996 and praised profusely by magazines such as Rock Hard (“nice phat sound”), Metal Hammer (“CHÂLICE have developed into an independent act that always hits the golden mean at the interface of prog rock and straight US metal”), Hard Line (“fantastic, extremely driving and transparent production”) or Rock City (“a breathtaking, exciting atmosphere in these songs”). The band toured with Saga in May 1998, and then with Uriah Heep and Nazareth starting November, before going on to record their third album, Digital Boulevard. This release also met with unanimously positive reviews, as did their tour with Doro, during which CHÂLICE made friends with the vocalist, her band and her fans: “The tour was gigantic, we reached a lot of people, particularly the Spanish and Portuguese fans sang along to our songs because they were played on the radio. And the cooperation with Doro herself was brilliant.” Their fourth album, Chameleonation, cut with producer Dennis Ward at the helm and out in October 2002, benefited from this positive atmosphere.
The smashin´ successor „SHOTGUN ALLEY“ finally brought the boys back on stage. They played celebrated concerts with ALICE COOPER and DEEP PURPLE and in the end of 2006 some shows with BONFIRE where they proved once more their reputation as a hot and passionate live-band.
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