Journey Revelation: Disc 1 is excellent, skip Disc 2

The new songs from Journey on their 2008 album, Revelation, are a delight. Okay, I’ve never left the 1970s and 1980s — queue up Bowling for Soup’s catchy song, 1985.

Even so, it was with some trepidation that we ordered Revelation, the new disc by Journey. Would the band sound like Journey, or like a bunch of has-beens trying to recapture their former glory?

Fear not: It’s the same old Journey. (You can read about my adventures in ordering the album in, “Great job, Walmart, with digital downloads. Not.“)

Revelation is a three-disc set.

The first disc consists of new songs, mainly written by Neal Schon and Jonathan Cain, with vocals by the wonderful Filipino singer Arnel Pineda. If you like the classic Journey hits, you’ll be delighted with many or most of these, which are in that same style. The very first track, “Never Walk Away,” brings you right back to the height of Journey’s popularity in the early 1980s.

If someone handed you disc 1, and said it was a long-lost Journey album from 1982, you’d believe it.

Skip disc 2. The band re-recorded many of its greatest hits with Pineda’s vocals: Wheel in the Sky, Don’t Stop Believin’, Only the Young, Separate Way, Open Arms, Who’s Crying Now, and so-on. But you know what? It sounds like a cover band. Those songs were definitively sung by Journey’s former lead vocalist, Steve Perry. Pineda (pictured) uncannily imitates Perry, but adds nothing to those songs.

All the songs from disc 1 are now on my iPod. None of the songs from disc 2 are going there.

The third disc is a DVD. We haven’t watched it yet.