Frontiers [Release date: 27.01.23]
Arctic Rain’s declamatory melodic rock will remind you of several expert practitioners of the genre.
From the Bon Jovi-esque ‘One World’, intense, in your face, with a fleeting sense of melody, and the title track, ‘Unity’, again modelled on a style once made popular by New Jersey’s finest, with vocalist Tobias Jonsson breathing AOR fire.
So yes, there’s a strong sense of deja vu here. It’s clear that the band is trying hard to recreate the chemistry and the circumstances that took AOR and Melodic Rock onto higher ground several decades ago. But simply aping the success of the past now seems a conservative approach, out of place in a time of hostile musical environments.
And so, even AOR bands dial up their music to 11.
Sometimes it works. On tracks ‘Fire In My Eyes’ and ‘Kings Of The Radio’, Jonsson’s muscular vocals evoke Graham Bonnet’s skyscaping yet eminently melodic delivery. There are no shortages of thundering rhythms and thick cut riffs here, all armour clad, tuneful, operating like a well oiled machine, reminiscent at times of Mr Big and Harem Scarem.
At other times they fall into the same trap as did many other bands who were sucked into the slipstream of big selling stadium rock, abandoning originality while progressively complicating the concept, losing them more fans than they could ever gain.
It could explain why the not quite chest beating ballad, ‘Believe’, sketched around a soft focus piano, is perhaps the album’s outstanding track. ***
Review by Brian McGowan
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