…And here I was, a year or two ago, thinking that the 1980’s oldschool hard rock/heavy metal was dead and buried. Boy was I wrong!

The Poodles are among the – apparently – ever growing number of retro hard rock bands that seem to appear everywhere these days. 

The Poodles come from Sweden and they certainly know their roots. This CD is so loaded with influence from bands like Bon Jovi, Kiss, Poison, Whitesnake, and of course, Europe (just to name a few), that I first thought that the whole album was made entirely of cover songs. 

That is not the case, however, and so the only track that I am 100% sure is a cover is “Dancing with Tears in my Eyes”, originally by Ultravox. This is, by the way, a song where lead singer Jacob Samuel sounds surprisingly a lot like Axl Rose. A very well performed cover song which goes well in line with the rest of CD. 

This is not actually a new release, though. The CD was released in Finland and Sweden in May 2006, and has already proved itself by earning platinum in Sweden for the first single “Night of Passion” (This track actually made me get my old Ronnie James Dio LP’s out to see if there was an original recording on one of those). 

The title track from this release has reached gold status in Sweden, and with good cause. This band has a promising future. All the songs are well written and performed. Only concern is that soon these bands will be a dime a dozen, as it sometimes happens. 

I don’t want to go through all the tracks on the CD. I think you already know what kind of music we are dealing with here. If you like this kind of music, it is definitely worth checking out. In fact, I’m pretty sure that you will get to hear much of it anyway because there are many radio friendly tracks on the CD. 

The production is good as well. Everything is well balanced, and the vocals are nice, crispy and clear. Synths and keyboard sound are kept just enough in the background to keep it from getting cheezy.