If we ignore 'Mozart Vibration', their 2016 reggae experiment with the oeuvre of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, this appropriately titled 'Way Down The Road' is the first new Panache Culture album since 2003's 'Le Discours'! That being said, on stage the Liège based band around brothers Hassan (vocal/guitar) and Afta Hamra (drums) has kept quite busy in recent years, and apart from 'Mozart Vibration' there was also 'Panache Play Bob', a musical tribute to the king of reggae. From the latter project, a number of echoes can still be found on 'Way Down The Road' in the form of original covers of Marley songs such as opener 'Night Shift' (in a dancehall version featuring Omar Perry), 'So Jah Seh', 'Revolution', or the acoustic closing track 'Misty Morning'. For 'Way Down The Road', Panache Culture left nothing to chance musically: the band was extended with hornsmen Guillaume 'Stepper' Briard (saxophone) and Henry 'Matic' Tenyue aka Matic Horns (trombone), and the album was expertly mixed by veteran Godwin Logie who collaborated with legends like Bob Marley, Steel Pulse, Inner Circle and Maxi Priest in the past. There are also vocal contributions from the aforementioned Omar Perry, Prezident Brown ('Struggle' our personal favorite on 'Way Down The Road') and a certain Glittershine. The latter, a noble stranger from Jamaica who was illegally passing through our country and kept pestering Hassan to record a song together. That eventually became 'Fly', and even though initially Hassan still had some doubts about the man's vocal abilities, he liked the end result so much that he wanted to bring Glittershine back into the studio only to discover he'd already sailed off into the sunset again. Amongst the new tracks on the album, apart from 'Struggle', we were most taken with title track 'Way Down The Road', produced by Prince Malachi, in which both Matic Horns' trombone and Aldo 'Zegaldo' Zeggers weeping guitar licks resound, and the energetic 'Don't Forget' (again featuring Henry Tenyue's glorious trombone) undoubtedly on its way to becoming a live favorite. Magnum opus of a great Belgian band that over the years never stopped growing and evolving, also earning them the necessary respect abroad!