Frontiers [Release date 07.08.20]
Arctic Rain’s music is gloriously reminiscent of the melodic rock genre’s more hypnotic moments. On most tracks, you can tell that they have been thumbing through a dog eared copy of the Eighties’ AOR Blueprint. Doesn’t make them bad people of course.
Many, many bands have since got into bed with the same successful formula, but “The One” is a triumph of pastiche over parody, of passion over plagiarism. It’s all down to the calibre of the songwriting and the band’s studio execution of course. And that’s where Arctic Rain is head and shoulders above most of its melodic rock contemporaries.
You can hear clear echoes of Treat and HEAT running through highly derivative AOR of ‘Lift Me Up’ and ‘Love Of My Life’ which opens the “The One”. But the album unquestionably pivots around the second track, ‘Lost’.
It’s full throated stuff, given real weight by an upwardly mobile chorus that races to crescendo, like a pumped up Survivor, (main songwriter Alpenborg worked with Jim Peterik collaborator, Toby Hitchcock, as well as Kee Marcello and Denis Ward).
Vocalist Tobias Jonsson projects the same vocal magnetism, fuelled by the same relentless energy as that of the late Jimi Jamison. It’s a quality you can hear on other AOR gems that adorn the album’s coat of many melodic rock colours…’Friends’ and ‘Free My Mind’ are particularly notable for their vertiginous, heartlifting hooks, and the fact that they mix a variety of influences while still sounding fresh and new.
Elsewhere, the picks would be the polished, big sounding ‘Night After Night’, a finely filigreed ballad, and ‘The One’, where the compact drama opens out onto a huge musical landscape, in the manner of Unruly Child.
No question, Arctic Rain’s debut is a truly magnificent listen. ****1/2
Review by Brian McGowan
Featured Artist: JOSH TAERK
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Power Plays w/c 15 April 2024
ENMY The Ledge (FiXT)
KAROBELA Get Hard (indie)
KATH & THE KICKS Neptune (indie)
THE BEE TELLERS River Poem (Black Sand Records)
LAUREN FREEBIRD Like A Bomb (indie)
Featured Albums w/c 15 April 2024
09:00-12:00 The Best of 2003-2023
12:00-13:00 The Best of 2003-2023
14:00-16:00 KATARINA PEJAK – Pearls On A String (Ruf Records)
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