AOR Heaven (Release Date 26.03.21)
France is hardly a hotbed of melodic rock but Paris, essentially the duo of Frederic Dechevanne and Sebastien Montet with some guest musicians, have now released three albums. They follow in a distinguished line of American bands named after places, and are respected enough in their field to benefit from a slick production by Britain’s own Steve Newman and Robert Sall of WET and Work of Art fame contributes a guest guitar solo.
However, there is a huge elephant in the room to address in that Frederic’s vocals, at least to these untrained ears, seem flat. The effect is not limited to one song and made it hard to give the album a fair hearing.
It’s a shame as the music is decent uptempo AOR with a slight hi-tech edge, drawing comparisons with Boulevard and Stage Dolls with some Def Leppard ‘Hysteria’ era influences. Though quite keyboard-led overall, Sebastien delivers some crisp and clean guitar solos, though on ‘Crazy Over You’ and ‘Game Changer’ they seem a tad out of context with the song.
There are some good choruses on ‘Can’t Get You Out of My Mind’ and ‘Hero’ while ‘Surrender’ sees a tougher guitar riff. My favourite song was ‘No Bridge Too Far’, with a strong hook and reminding me of some of the underground AOR releases of the nineties, Storyteller in particular. However Other songs were fillers and there was not enough of a variation in tempo. But ultimately an otherwise worthy effort is likely to sit on the shelf as I was unable to get beyond those vocals. ** 1/2
Review by Andy Nathan
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