7

7 is the record on which Talisman played groove-focused melodic hard rock around Jeff Scott Soto's soulful singing, Marcel Jacob's swelling bass and sharp guitar. As the title says, it's their seventh album, and this 2006 release turned out to be the band's final studio record; a farewell tour followed in 2007. Fredrik Åkesson and Jamie Borger continue to support it — a summation of seventeen years of work. The songs move forward not through flashy speed but through rhythmic stickiness and the strength of the choruses. Funk and blues sensibilities mix in unobtrusively, and the playing has a grown-up ease. From the opener “Falling” through “Rhyme or Reason” and “Forevermore” to the closing “Back 2 the Feeling,” the long journey seeps in unforced. Jacob was originally the player who backed Yngwie Malmsteen and John Norum, and the man at the band's center died in 2009. This record also became the last record of the conversation between his songs and his bass. A record balancing hard rock's force and refined melodic sense without strain.