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Soundgarden, Alice in Chains with a touch of Van Halen is how The Wheel from Norway is trying to entertain us on their selftitled debut album.
The Wheel was formed in 2007 and is known in their home country as a solid live band, and with this disc they show us that they used all this time to do a mature and at the same time a melodic hard rock album.
They don't deliver something half cooked or dry on the dinner table. This is well grilled rock n' roll with a lots of american barbuque sause on the top. As they would say to themselves: they haven't done something earth shattering or revolutionary and it's not somekind of new modern metal album, just solid melodic american rock n' roll.

Plain good hard rock with surprising thightness on the tracks and with Jan Erik Salvesen on vocals, who's got the perfect roughtness in his throath for this kind of rock songs. The love for the 80s rock shines through on the 10 tracks and the inspiration from band as Skynard Lynard, Whitesnake, Purple, Blackfoot, is easy to recall. The problem for The Wheel is perhaps to create the uniqe sound to make the difference between them and all other bands in the genre. It's not enought to do just an alright record, if you want to make it to the top. I hope that this band will survive the competition from many of the reuniteded rock bands from the 80s that realeses new albums this summer.

I'll keep The Wheel on my Ipod for the rest of this summer that's for sure. Because this is better than an alright album, this is a good investment for your rock collection.

Extra credits for "Walk On Out" which is a groovy song with great guitar riffs just in my taste.

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