One one hand being signed to Frontiers gives you a slot with a Rock label who are slowly buying up all our memories from the last thirty years and adding a few new ones along with their own studio-generated concoctions, on the other hand as far as publicity goes it’s a real lottery – you get the Frontiers machine but with so many artists on board some great releases are bound to get lost in the numbers especially that now Frontiers only releases ‘streams’ to reviewers before release date. Years ago I used to review all Frontier releases as soon as I got them, way before release date, it built up anticipation and I know first hand generated sales – these days I don’t review anything in advance because I just simply don’t review from streams.
As albums go though, and in bringing artists together – Ammunition seems like a match made in heaven pairing as it does Eclipse’s Erik Martensson and one of Rock’s finest current vocalists Age Sten Nilsen.
Opening track ‘Time’ is one of the very best songs I’ve heard this year, a real soaring hard rocker with some Queen-like touches that set it above the pack. Its interesting therefore that ‘Freedom Finder’ comes next, a song that takes the pace instantly off and rides a rater prosaic Billy Squier-like guitar line that can’t help but echo ‘The Stroke.’ It and ‘Virtual Reality Boy’ which is a nice enough slab of Melodic Rock, are interestingly my two let favourite tracks here and both come front and centre. Sometimes you see track-listing can make a difference.
The reality is that it’s instantly remedied and both the instantly appealing and pacier ‘Gung Ho (I Told You So)’ and the moody and shimmering ballad ‘Eye For a Eye’ more than make up for that detour. Indeed ‘Eye For a Eye’ is one of those songs that has you wondering what a whole album in that vein would sound like?
‘Tear Your City Down’ puts that thought to one side, it’s the sort of song that instantly gets the blood flowing, a great beat, nice anticipation, and a smooth chorus that is made to sing along to and here you hear Age Sten Nilsen at his very best – that wonderful soulful mid tempo rocker that allows him to linger on his notes.
With members from acts like Wig Wam, Eclipse, Nordic Union, TNT, WET, and Circus Maximus – seriously how could Ammunition fail? ‘Caveman’ adds a nice Hard Rocking Stadium-filling thrust whilst ‘Wrecking Crew’ the song that they took through to the Norwegian Eurovision finals is shameless Pop-infused 80’s Hard Rock.
That leaves us just with the wonderful, rich demi-ballad ‘Miss Summertime’ and maybe my current favorite rocker here ‘Bad Bones’, but we’re taken out with the pleasing stomp and groove of ‘Klondike.’
This self-titled second release is at least the equal to the wonderful debut ‘Shanghaied’ but it is a different album, a more serious album that lacks the high spirits of that first outing, and whilst that is a shame what we get instead is a more rounded, more mature second serving that gives every indication that ‘Ammunition’ have what it takes to climb onto the biggest of stages. Let’s see where this takes us.
