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I
was really excited when I put on this CD. Being a devoted Hard Rock
collector, I sometimes come across a lot of obscure releases and when I
found Shark Island’s brilliant debut from 1989 a couple of years back,
I fell in love instantly!
So,
with those Hair-band anthems of the debut (“Law of the Order”) still
ringing in my ears, I really expected a blast from the past putting on
this album. But this has nothing to do with their Hard Rock heyday
material at all. No Sir! They’ve put all the anthems on the shelf and
toned it all down a notch or two! In this case that ends up sounding
like an anonymous mixture of modern BON JOVI over classic melodic rock
song-writing plus an additional taste of KINGDOM COME. Unfortunately it
all ends up being pretty average! Maybe it’s the fact that Richard
Black has changed his style of phrasing? I really can’t tell. But I
can honestly say that this is far from good enough! Perhaps I’m
judging too hard here since the debut always will be a classic from my
point of view but I’ve really heard more exciting material being
released from Frontiers.
Sporadically
we hear potential “hits” on this album, i.e. “Go West”, which
almost made me sing along but the overall picture being drawn here is a
rather boring one!
Forget
about all those mid-tempo acoustic ballads and I’m probably willing to
give this band another try!
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