Sooty brings up a good point, and personally I have no problem with ballads, even when one of my hard rockin' metal bands does one.
I'll use Slayer as the antithesis for variety on most of their albums, I don't play their music very often because it all blurs together after a while. When I am feelin' aggressive then it's perfect for that mind set, as a steady diet it wears me out really fast.
Journey when Steve Perry was in the band was famous for their ballads, I will leave it for TUNEZ or Hardnecker to correct me but I think most of their biggest hits were ballads. So when the new singer does a ballad a lot of hard core fans will take umbrage, at least that is the feeling I get for the criticism unfairly leveled at the new line-up.
Eclipse is Neal Schon's album, I haven't heard him play this inspired in a long long time.
I have to say my favorite track so far, is "Human Feel"...I played the new album on my Reference system last night and it sounds fabulous.
