SunStrike
Rock Your World

Whenever stuff comes from AOR-Heaven hope rises slightly, only to most often result in mild disappointment of yet another AOR-band making yet another copy-paste version of some idols. The label says: “SunStrike: A glare in the road that can temporarily blind drivers. But SunStrike will blind you with catchy melodies and big choruses!” sounds menacing to me, of course when writing this I already know that it is. It is a Swedish band. They have a nice looking cover art, and their sound is just as predictable as the cover art, name and logo suggests.

It is classical, typical AOR in accordance with the book “AOR For Dummies”. Excellent production with the mix and mastering done by the hands of Erik Mårtensson, a man behind the buttons and knobs of many bands in the genre. Catchy and strong choruses that will take you along for a ride from the first listen. Nothing that will change you view on how the world of AOR works, it is the common style of songs of the typical AOR-album. No surprises here, a dozen tracks all playing around four minutes. I think that it is easy to conclude that this is a typical and solid AOR-album.

No doubt it is an album that appeals to the regular high ratings reviewers around the web, some will say that this like fifty other albums will be top ten of the year and so on and it is easy to believe that after the first one or two playthroughs considering that it is a catchy album that is very easy to take in. I really like it the first time, catchy and fun songs but the fun subsides after three or four times and I am less impressed. Songs like the title track, Right Track and a few more will inspire some web reviewers to write big words and claim many things. It is a good album no denying that but it is just too much of a blatant copy of what has come before for me to really break out my pen for the big words.

This is great for the AOR enthusiast who likes everything in the genre, who doesn’t want anything to change only hear the same thing over and over. The fact is that this album come in hundreds each year and most of them are like this one, too good to hate and too bad to love. A well made and good while stile quite uninteresting album that lasts for about one or two plays before it becomes one more in the ever increasing pile of good AOR albums that will be forgotten the day after it has been reviewed.

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