DARE-Out Of The Silence II

Legend Records

The first Dare CD ‘Out Of The Silence’ came out in 1988 and to celebrate the fact that the CD is 30 years old now singer/keyboardist Darren Wharton and guitarist Vinny Burns (the only two remaining founding members) thought it would be a cool idea to re-record the whole album with the current line-up of Dare. This idea was earlier executed for the ‘Calm Before The Storm’ album a few years ago but in between the band recorded also the latest CD ‘Sacred Ground’ and is planning a new studio CD for 2019. And the last couple of months the band has toured quite intensively with (amongst others) FM. It seems that Dare more or less has come to life again as Darren Wharton has never been so keen on touring with Dare but the return of Vinny Burns must have brought renewed enthusiasm. I remember the 1988 version (produced by Mike Shipley) quite well. The band really started to make a name for themselves but when the second album ‘Blood From Stone’ did not get great reviews internal problems within the group come to the boil resulting the band being dropped by the label and Burns left for a spell in Asia. Later on Wharton started Dare again (after doing a few Thin Lizzy tours) but had relocated from Manchester to Wales, built his own studio near his house situated in a valley and has been working from that breathtaking location (been there for a visit years ago) for many years now. The recordings for ‘Out Of The Silence II’ were done there with Wharton producing. The band is claiming that on these recordings the sound is harder in comparison with the original version but I have not really heard that. What I did hear is that most songs are still quite relevant and stood the test of time. Especially the hard rocking track ,,Heartbreaker’’ sounds cool yet ‘hot’ as does ,,King Of Spades’’ (with those lovely Irish twists and turns that relates of course to Darren’s first band Thin Lizzy where as an 18 year old he got thrown in the deep end by the late great Phil Lynott), one of the best songs in Dare’s 30 year history. Dare is still capable of producing blistering AOR as this album shows over and over again. We are listening to experienced musicians on these ten tracks and as I presume that the first version is out of print (or at least difficult to come by) a new version is more than welcome although the difference with the first record is not as huge as they proclaim. Still a great album as it already was all those years ago!