Saturday, May 26, 2012

OXYGEN: "Final Warning"

Rating: 7/10
Label: Escape Music 2012
Review by Kimmo Toivonen

A veteran in the Swedish metal scene, vocalist Tony Niva has been around for quite a while. OXYGEN is his new band, and this time, AOR is the name of the game. His high-pitched voice suits this kind of melodic stuff quite well, although I'm sure it will divide opinions. I'm not even sure of my own opinion - at times his wailing gets a bit irritating.

Most of the album is up-tempo, bouncy AOR with somewhat sugary choruses. More than once, the name of ABBA comes up. Especially the ballad "I Remember" sounds like it was stolen from the Andersson-Ulvaeus vault of unreleased songs. I'm not saying that it's a bad thing though, those guys know how to write melodies! A departure from the poppy AOR sound is the slightly heavier "Gold From The Future", which has traces of TNT's lighter material. Niva hits some very high notes on it.

All in all, I quite like the album. However, it could've used a few real killer songs and I'm afraid it will be overshadowed by those recent releases that do have them. File under "nice".

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