Modern day Melodic Hard Rock from Germany.
Not having come across these guys before is pretty much the biggest surprise of the year for me – a Melodic Hard Rock band with four albums and ten years behind them and I’d never heard of them! I was therefore pretty eager to take a listen to the sort of record that could crack the Top 20 charts in their homeland. So I sat and pressed play…
‘Generation Goodbye’ that opens the album is nice, melodic, cool and catchy but you feel doesn’t over-stretch the band, you end up thinking ‘nice opener but show me your biggest and best’. ‘Hashtag your life’ that follows hot on the heels seems similarly restrained yet it’s a faster song and the reins are longer and looser.
By the time you get to ’If Clocks were Running Backwards’ despite the clever song titles you’re still unsure. At least that’s how this 5th album from Germany’s Kissin’ Dynamite made me feel, though I’ll be the first to admit that sadly this was my first taste of the band.
Where it changed for me was with ‘Somebody to Hate’ a song that ups the Metal component, as does ‘She Came She Saw’ which follows. This was better, more meat and still the same level of melody! Indeed it’s the second half of the album that really does it for me, laying on a string of searing melodic rockers: ‘Highlight Zone’; ‘’Masterpiece’; ‘Flying Colours’ and ‘Under Friendly Fire’. It’s great stuff and that run of six songs is so strong you wonder why it didn’t open proceedings.
The album proper closes with ‘Larger Than Life’, a decent rocker with a great chorus and ‘Utopia’ a slower, more orchestrated number that has a modern day Lillian Axe feel and “epic” written all over it, but doesn’t quite work for me. Still, an album of this quality will have me back-tracking double-speed!
A deluxe version of the album also contains bonus tracks: ‘Living in the Fastlane’, along with an acoustic version of ‘Only the Good Die Young’ and live versions of ‘Ticket to Paradise’ and ‘I Will Be King’ – as well as a bonus DVD with videos, live clips, and documentary footage.
