Album review: RADIOACTIVE – Legacy

November 13th, 2013 by jason

Tommy Denander has played and appeared on over 2,000 albums now so it stands to reason when he had his own musical project, Radioactive, he’d have a decent number of musician friends to help him out. These three albums – ‘Ceremony Of Innocence’, ‘Yeah’ and ‘Taken’ have been tastefully packaged into a triple CD set by those lovely folk at Escape Music. You get a CD lyric booklet and three bonus songs, plus three unreleased tracks. If that wasn’t enough the best of the three Radioactive albums to date ‘Taken’ has had the instruments re-recorded and all three albums have been remastered.

The musicians involved over these three discs really does read like a ‘Who’s Who’ of melodic rock with Neal Schon, Jeff Paris, Fergie Frederiksen, Steve Porcaro, Bobby Kimball and most of Toto past and present!

The debut album ‘Ceremony Of Innocence’ is the most star studded one with Toto fans sure to love ‘Crimes Of Passion’ which sees two of the band’s vocalists Bobby Kimball and Joseph Williams in action, along with the rest of Toto bar Steve Lukather. ‘LA Movies’ is another Toto-esque tune helped by having Joseph Williams singing on it. Fergie Frederiksen keeps the Toto flag flying on the excellent title track, lots of lovely keys and guitar playing on this one. You even get a little funk added to the proceedings on the instrumental ‘Liquid’, with Greg Phillinganes stealing the limelight with his keyboard playing.

This album is very Toto sounding although the subsequent albums followed a more melodic rock direction as Tommy Denander spread his musical wings so to speak.

By the second album ‘Yeah’ drummer Pat Thearn appears on most of the songs with Tommy handling a lot of the other instruments. There are still a few top draw guest bass players though including Tony Franklin and the late Marcel Jacob of Talisman fame. Steve Overland gives a polished performance as you’d expect on ‘Lies Feed On Lies’, which sounds like a latter day FM tune.

‘Taken’ is the pick of the three with some sterling performances from Gary Barden on the hook filled ‘Hit Her Where It Hurts’ and Last Autumn Dream’s Michael Erlnadsson gives a heartfelt vocal performance on the ballad ‘This I Promise You’. The two bonus songs are a treat for Jeff Paris fans as he sings on both.

If you don’t have these albums in your collection get this CD pronto as all three albums are worthy of a place in any melodic rock/AOR fan’s collection. Let’s hope Tommy Denander finds some time out of his busy schedule to record another Radioactive album soon.

****1/2

Review by Jason Ritchie

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REVENGIN Decadent Feeling (Wormholedeath)

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