Novella - "A Liquid Earth"

Novella - A Liquid Earth

1992, Starsong

1. Story

2. Bad Place

3. Don't You Run

4. Fire in the House

5. Heaven's On My Mind

6. Let's Talk About Love

7. Right In the Middle

8. Colour of Love

9. Missionary

10. Stranger

I didn't like the first one as much until recently... so it would stand to reason that I liked this one a lot better when it first came out even though it seems like everyone prefers the debut. Still, it's hard to argue that this isn't one solid rock platter. I don't think it's quite as hard as One Big Sky though. This disc still gets many spins even though it's old. I got to see these guys on tour at Kingdom Bound and they were pretty decent. They were scheduled to play an encore but nobody cheered for an encore. We all just sort of slowly dispersed. I bet that made them feel like crap! To be fair, it was in the afternoon and afternoon shows usually didn't have encores. They also had this huge world-shaped balloon that had "A Liquid Earth" printed on a banner hanging over their merch tent.

Useless Fact: Novella pretty much disappeared after this one. I've heard that the vocalist went on to do some solo stuff but I've never seen nor heard any of it.

Novella - "One Big Sky"

Novella - One Big Sky

1991, Starsong

1. Do We Just Surrender?

2. Running Home

3. Fire Eyes

4. I Need You

5. Whispers in the Night

6. Give Me Love

7. Lay It On Me

8. Who Are We To Say?

9. Sweet Rising Sun

10. Big Sky

I first heard Novella on a video called Metal Missionaries. It had songs from Whitecross, Bride, and Xalt as well as these guys. I absolutely loved the two tracks, "Do We Just Surrender?" and "Give Me Love" - solid late 80's/early 90's hard rock. The rest of the album I wasn't much impressed with for some reason. What can I say? I was young. These days though I think this is a fantastic rock disc. Definitely worth checking out even though it's out of print. Vocalist Jonathan Pagano's voice is smooth. For some reason this album makes me think of Richard Marx but I have no idea why. They don't really sound similar... Oh, this one has really cool cover art too!

Useless Fact: In the Metal Missionaries video they would cut to an interview with the band during the leads. Ugh! I didn't mind it when I was young, but now it annoys me.