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ADRENALINE RUSH
Soul Survivor
Frontiers Music Srl - 2017
http://www.adrenalinerush.se

Living up to the advance billing that this 2nd album had more of a heavier rock sound that the group's debut album, the opening track on Soul Survivor is the aptly named "Adrenaline". The song instanty provides the necessary fuel to get one's blood racing with its heavy melodic up tempo pacing. The song never lets up and you feel a sense of exhilaration throughout. This feeling is immediately followed up on with "Love Like Poison", which keeps up the aggressive musical score before downshifting a bit during the song's midsection.

Singer Tave Wanning has a good vocal sound and manages to add some different inflections to her singing when called upon to do so on a couple of different tracks. However, I thought the vocals were a little limp on the main verses of the title track, a power ballad that really only connects when the song's chorus kicks in giving it a more epic feel in both scope and sound. But the throatier sound from Wanning on the track "Break The Silence" was a winning choice.

Lyrically, there is a smattering of really good lines. On the song "Sinner", the line "I'm the winner, the pride within me, riding the wings of the storm, cause you're a sinner" helps illustrate the song's kind of woman done wrong storyline. While I ultimately found the closing song "Crash" a little flat for my tastes, I did like the line "With your messed up rules and your gang of fools, do you really think I'm blind".

For my own personal tastes, I had three songs on the album that had me wanting to just put them on repeat for a while so I could revel in them. All three songs are fiery and engaging rocker cuts, which is where the music shines brightest. "Stand My Ground" and "My Life" cast Wanning's vocals in the role of being the defiant one. You can picture her standing in the face of a conflict with clenched fist raised high. On the latter track, the line in the chorus that reads as "I won't apologize, I never compromise, I want it all right now" screams out to be adopted by someone as a personal motto.

While I may not be full of unrestrained fire and youthful passion like I once was, I really enjoyed the ode to such character traits on the song "Wild Side". Instantly accessible with rock and even some metallic overtones, this track would've been a huge hit back in the day.

With all this being said, you might wonder how I could enjoy the music on this album yet barely comment on the band playing said music. And that's where I have a problem. The album's liner notes do indeed show four guys that make up the band surrounding singer Wanning. While she (with no writing credits on the album, by the way) obviously provides the vocal tracks, all the instruments are played by Fredrick Folkare. In fact, this probably should've been billed as his project with Manning being credited as a guest performer. He co-wrote 7 of the 12 tracks on the album as well as producing, recording and mixing the disc. It may be how things are done within the Frontiers framework but it is annoying to see those featured on the album as members of the band having no creative ownership in the material.

It doesn't mean I don't like a most of what I heard on Soul Survivor, but my opinion is somewhat affected by the fact the band members seem like interchangeable bit players in what is ostensibly their own project. Of course if you didn't read the album's liner notes, you'd never know this information. I'll let you decide for yourself if that is a good thing or a bad thing.

Setting aside all that, I did quite enjoy the Soul Survivor album judging solely on the actual music on the disc. The heavier rock sound combined with just the right touch of commercial accessibility will undoubtedly make it an album worth playing over and over again.

3.8 Out Of 5.0

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