While the losses of Perry, Augeri, and Soto have played miserably into the plans of the redesigned Journey, they have certainly hit paydirt in the miraculously found Arnel Pineda.  Pineda turned up, of all places, on videos found on YouTube.  Not long after Schon’s discovery of the talented singer, Pineda was the new lead vocalist for Journey.  Aside from a necessary but improbable reuniting of Steve Perry and the band he helped make famous, Pineda is where he should be.  However, I do find it interesting that the Journey clan struggle to find a Perry-like singer showing that they still value the quality of Steve Perry’s unique voice more than they might care to admit.

On their new, Wal-Mart only, triple-disc offering, Revelation, they provide a disc of new material, a live disc of concert performances, and <GASP> a 3rd disc of re-recorded hits, 11 of them covering a lot of ground in their hits catalogue.

The album begins with a bang on “Never Walk Away,” a bullseye song with all the juice needed to qualify as a genuine Journey track.  It sets the tone for the rest of the disc as, song for song, Revelation underscores what an inspired Journey disc should be.  Clearly, Pineda has inspired the clan to go to the limit – short of a Perry reintroduction – in the production of an album that can slot favourably into the extensive Journey catalogue.

With “Like a Sunshower,” just barely missing being single material and the perfect, arena-rock mentality of the Schon instrumental, “The Journey (Revelation),” Journey has crafted a very decent set of songs that surpass the expectations set for this album.

The DVD is of a show in Las Vegas.  The set is rather sedate even as Pineda is very excited to be where he is.  At one point, he raises his arms while singing “…I’m forever yours…” as if to offer himself to the audience for the duration.  A little proud and cocksure, no doubt, but with a voice like Pineda, he has ample reason to be such.  However, I still maintain that Perry and Journey will reconnect yet again, even if the bad blood is too thick.  If anything, the DVD shows a band at work.

The 3rd disc is one that I’d call an unnecessary one.  Filled with 11 tracks of newly recorded versions of past classics, it sounds to me like the current band set off to re-create those with the intent to ‘scrub’ the original Perry-sung versions.  Pineda is that good a vocalist that a re-recording could disturb the waters somewhat.  Imagine a reformed Led Zeppelin re-recording their past songs with a new drummer, or The Who doing the same with songs that Moon and Entwhistle had previously recorded.  It’s an improper practice and one that I wish Journey would have resisted.  I suggest forgetting that this bonus disc exists. This is what is called "cracking the stone."

I still believe that Journey could have been even better with a reinvention, employing a vocalist like Kevin Chalfant, who had played a stint with Storm that included members of Journey.  In this way, they would have sidestepped the glaring lights of a search for a singer that can climb the scales in the familiar Perry-like way.  If Journey needed this, they should have worked out the issues and gone for the real thing.  It’s worse now since the band convinced Pineda of the need to re-record classic tracks made famous with another singer.  Pineda should have politely declined that temptation to help ‘erase’ the originals, supplanting them with Pineda-sung studio recorded versions.

But I will say this, Journey has recaptured a lot of magic with Revelation in a triumphant way.  And for the first time in many, many years, I’d like to see them again in a live setting.

This review is dedicated to a Journey fan who refused to let me NOT review this album.
Special thanks to Dan C