Jeff Scott Soto – Lost In The Translation (Special Edition) (2009)

California native Jeff Scott Soto is a journeyman vocalist who started out singing for theatrical metal guitarist Yngwie Malmsteen in the '80s. He then went on to front numerous not-quite-on-the-radar groups throughout the '90s before teaming with Journey guitarist Neal Schon in the group Soul SirkUS in 2004. Since 1995, Soto has also consistently released solo albums, this being his fourth. The opening song, and Schon co-write, "Believe in Me" is bravely out of time and place, sounding like an outtake from Journey's Frontiers (or like psyche-up music from an '80s teen film). "Soul Divine" has an '80s lite-metal bent to it, as does "Drowning" -- and so it goes, without much deviation. Soto just happens to have one of those dramatically fierce, vibrato-drenched voices -- like Steve Perry after a testosterone infusion -- suited toward that non-timeless idiom of neutered '80s pop-metal. This album is full of cheesily grand gestures befitting a certain time and place, but not this (or any other) time and place. Lost in the Translation is aimed squarely at that rapidly shrinking demographic that still finds Warrant, Stryper, and Kix palatable. Originally released on the European label Frontiers in 2004, the CD was issued stateside by Locomotive Music in 2005.