Album review : PRIDE & JOY ANTHOLOGY – 10 Years Of Pride & Joy

September 21st, 2025 by brianmc

Pride&Joy [Release date : 19.09.25]

The Pride & Joy label is celebrating ten years active in the world of rock and metal.
Founder and CEO Birgitt Schwanke has created a bijou music business that just grows and grows.

The 10 Years Of Joy anthology comprises 13 handpicked tracks, primarily Melodic Rock, that best represent the label’s offerings.

We’ve recognised elsewhere that Melodic Rock largely leans towards familiarity nowadays, and that originality has come to mean putting a fresh spin on the past.

More than any other track here, Osukaru’s ‘Dreams Don’t Die’ confirms that view. Written originally by band leader/ guitarist Oz Petersson for White Widdow’s 2014 album, Crossfire.

It opens this 13 track, P&J Anthology, and takes full advantage of Fredrik Werner’s gritty, breathless vocals and a heart pumping chorus. It’s an object lesson in how to embrace a genre that peaked in the eightes, yet still sounds relevant today.

There’s an unshowy elegance to Alien’s ballad, ‘I Remember’, but in places it’s a bit too close to Steve Perry for comfort. Only a softer, dreamier ambience separates it from The Journey singer’s ‘Foolish Heart’ solo hit in 1984. Of course, many might see the resemblance as a plus.

Midnite City’s ‘Only A Matter Of Time’ from their 2023 album, In At The Deep End, is a peach. The album (their fourth) enjoyed uniformly positive reviews in the AOR/Melodic Rock community, especially from GRTR’s resident AOR authority, Andy Nathan.

Pulled along on a melancholy undertow, the song’s melody shimmers and sparkles… singer Rob Wylde’s reined back vocal strikes the right tone for the song’s sentiments.

Why this track was relegated to “bonus track for Japan” is a mystery.

In another world, another time, bands like Nationwide, whose song here, a cover of Kenny Loggins’ ‘Danger Zone’ (written by Georgio Moroder for the “Top Gun” movie), would be enjoying frequent headlines. Each time they hit the chorus here they seems to ratchet the song’s sense of tension up that little bit little further… all the best melodic rock is underlined by urgency and momentum, like this. (again, surprisingly, this was only a Japanese bonus track).
It’s the best by far of the four covers on the album. The others being Universe III / Abba’s ‘Summer Night City’; Heaven’s Reign / Tom Petty’s ‘Free Fallin’; Heartline / Foreigner’s ‘Urgent’.

Oliver Hartmann’s ‘Twenty Times Colder’, an alt mix of his last long player’s title track is pretty cool, in more ways than one.
At his most full throated, his vocals call up the powerful voice of David Coverdale. Admitedly, that comparison is nothing new, but is hard to avoid. The parent album might also be worth seeking out.

Final track is Mikael Erlandsson’s ‘Dynamite’ dating from 2008, a tongue in cheek pop/rock song, at the time judged too poppy for Last Autumn’s Dream. It’s a catchy bit of fluff to close with.

Roll on the next ten years. ****

Review by Brian McGowan

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Power Plays w/c 1 December 2025

We feature all the artists selected in this sequence in 2025.

Featured Albums w/c 1 December 2025

09:00-12:00 The Best of 2003 – 2025 (Melodic Rock)
12:00-13:00 The Best of 2003 – 2025 (Melodic Hard Rock)
14:00-16:00 The Best of 2003 – 2025 (Singer Songwriter)

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