Frontiers [Release date 12.08.25]
It’s in some way inspiring to hear a band embracing the past wholeheartedly. Pretty well everywhere you scratch the paint on No Way Out, you’ll find the 1980s underneath.
The Switch was formed by identical twin brothers, Tom and James Martin. As well as writing for and producing their own bands, Vega and Nitrate, they’ve written material for Khymera, Ted Poley, Tommy Funderburk, Sunstorm and House Of Lords.
They know what works and what doesn’t… they have the awards to prove it.
This new band, The Switch, was formed with a few like minded music lovers, Denis Butabi Borg (Cruzh) and Canadian vocalist, Bobby John, a writer producer himself, whose collaborations with a number of artists has earned him over 20 million hits on Spotify.
Together, they’ve provided a glorious retrospective of the AOR genre’s fertile years, when anthemic choruses, haunting vocals and memorable hooks were de rigueur.
Almost at random, ‘One Night With You’, ‘Hanging On To Seventeen’ and ‘Strangers Eyes’ come fully armed with many a midnight rendezvous and a posse of passionate sentiments. All part of the plan.
You would have thought the limiting structures of the AOR formula might have suffocated the songwriting process. But no, it energised it.
The album is littered with carefully calibrated examples. The polished, layered, big guitars of ‘Play The Game’ is as close as we get to Hysteria without actually being Def Leppard. Leading us into ‘Young Hearts’, resonating with the melancholy tones of eighties’ late nite radio rock.
That said, the title track hits home the hardest, cruising quickly through a world of urgency, underlining the brothers’ studio craftsmanship as much as the calibre of their songwriting.
A winner all the way. ****
Review by Brian McGowan
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