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When another unknown singer from one of the big talent shows on TV is standing in the front-row in a hard rocking band, I begin to yawn. Everybody can't be a vocal-star, but this new Swedish hard rock band knew which nice singer they built their band around. Sofia Lilja is her name and the music has big influences from the 80's; Journey, Boston, Scorpions and such bands comes to mind.

Nubian Rose plays quite radio friendly hard rock, I could say Scandi-pop-light-metal. It is very melodic and have big room for Sofia to act. She is truly put in the front and in a few of the tracks the guitars are breaking through the vocal wall.

I really like the three intro songs and specially the best track on the album 'Mountain'! A mega strong title track that carries the album alone. I saw a short part of a morning TV show with Nubian Rose, when they were playing one song from this album and Sofia has a big stage presence. She took charge of the scene and gave us a big vocal performance. But a bit edgier sting in Sofia's voice might be desirable and yet more clout had been sitting like a gem in the necklace.

I believe that the musical craftsmanship is better than the songs on 'Mountain', and with two quite good covers of 'Once Bitten' and the old Ozzy/Lita Ford hit ' Close Your Eyes Forever' in the tracklist the total impression reaches an OK level anyway.

I hope that the fans of female fronted melodic rock will find this album, because it's not bad, not at all.

They have potential to be bigger if they write more of their own material and get more attitude and don't forget us guitar freaks. Put the guitars more in the front-row and I will applause!!

Nubian Rose: Sofia Lilja - vocals, Christer Åkerlund - guitar, Thomas Lindgren - guitar, Henrik Uhrbom - bass, David Algesten - drums and Fredrik Åkerlund on the keyboard.

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