Andi Deris – Come In from the Rain (1997)

You know the concept of shame record collection? It's the part of your record collection you bought as a child or a teenager that you liked back then, but that is kind of embarrassing nowadays. For many of us, they have been hidden away from the actual record collection that is supposed to tell you what kind of music you like and as a result also, what kind of a person you are. For most people my age, this part of the collection consists mainly of Eurotechno bands like Aqua or E-Rotic, but to me, the shame record collection consists mainly of power metal bands that I used to listen to as an early teenager. Specifically, I was very much into Helloween's music, because I liked their melodic approach and fast guitar solos. Andi Deris was a lead singer of the band for a while and Come In from the Rain was his first solo album.



The music on this album is varied and it ranges from heavier power metal songs to hard rock and power ballads. I have to say that listening to this album now, I think this might be one of the worst CDs I own. I remember liking a few ballads from this album back in the day quite a lot, but now it all just sounds really cheesy and very uncool.

The album starts with typical 90's hard rock guitars in the song House of Pleasure that almost resembles the sounds of Ugly Kid Joe. The problems start from the second Deris starts singing. The vocal melody is quite horrific and the style of singing is filled with cheesy metal falsetto and vibrato. Next up is the title track Come In from the Rain. This song starts with a church organ and incredibly cheesy whispering. The overdriven power metal chords feed into echoey electric guitars. This is one of the few songs that raise some kind of nostalgia in me, because I used to like the song, probably because of its melody. Think Higher is like a power metal Eurovision song. The melody is just incredibly cheesy. When the high guitars play, I can almost see a German dude in leather trousers in a wide rock pose doing solo faces. Next up is the ballad Good Bye Jenny, which was probably my favourite song back in the day. Today, it sounds just as cheesy as the rest of the album and the sounds are just horrific, but I can see that this kind of melancholic melody could've intrigued me back in the day. The King of 7 Eyes is the heaviest song on the album. It's not quite as melodic as Helloween songs, but it has the same kind of fast pounding guitar riff and drum thing going on. Foreign Rainbow starts off like 80's Neil Young rock song, but of course the sounds soon make it clear that this is still a power metal band we're talking about. The chorus is very catchy. Somewhere, Someday, Someway has even some acoustic elements, which makes it a lot more tolerable than rest of the album. Also the vocals aren't yelled out, but there's nice softness in the sounds. Still, I wouldn't go that far as to call this a listenable song. Now That I Know This Ain't Love is almost like a country song, but with strange electronic sounding acoustic guitars. the composition is very poor. Could I Leave Forever is like maybe the most generic song from the album. If you only listen to one song from the album, it should be this because after you've done that, you've pretty much heard the entire album. 1000 Lightyears Away is like adult oriented rock with cheesy guitar riffs and even more cheesy lyrics.

Unfortunately I wasn't able to find any music videos from this album. I'm sure they would've been absolutely hilarious and filled with leather clothing and wind machines. The aesthetics of music like this is just incredibly cheesy from today's perspective. Maybe it was even back in the day, but I was just too young to realise it.

I really don't know if listening to this album was funny or just painful. Probably both. I can safely say that even if this album was somewhat important to me as a teenager, I'm not going to listen to this again at least in a long while.

Listen to the album on Youtube.