This is a great album just right to get you in the mood this festive season if you like your soundtrack studded with catchy melodic rock with a really positive outlook, great guitars and keyboards, wonderful compositions and some great vocals. If that’s your thing then don’t worry about the quality – these 12 tracks are gems.
Wildness first started out back in 2013, but released their first single ‘Collide’ in 2015 and it was that and second single ‘Turning the Pages’ released early in 2016 (and both rerecorded for this album) that got the them attention of AOR Heaven and led to this release.
Song-wise it’s hard to fault – the first three tracks are flawless passionate melodic rock with just the right amount of bite tempered by great melodies and enough balls not to veer into AOR territory. Indeed ‘War Inside My Head’, ‘Stranger’ and ‘Shadowland’ might just be the best opening we’ve heard to an album in this genre in years.
The key-laden ‘Alibi’ also hits the spot and in ‘Collide’ you can hear exactly why the band raised so much interest, it’s great melodic hard rock. It’s the variety though that wins me over ‘Highlands’ is almost reminiscent of later Thin Lizzy musically and has a great guitar sound threaded through the melodies. Even the one real AOR moment ‘Your Last Romance’ shines as it swaggers.
The rest similarly are all winners – I love the feel and confidence of ‘Down in the City’ and ‘Falling Down’ even has a shot of the Sunset Strip late-eighties coursing through it’s veins. It’s ballad ‘The Flame’ though that is right up there with the finest moments – it’s beautifully constructed as it builds and soars away, but ”Welcome the Night’ isn’t far behind – starting with simple acoustic before it bursts into life and rocks out. Closing with ‘Turning the Pages’ (that early second single) ensures that we go out with a bang.
What a stunning debut.
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