Adrenaline Rush – S/T

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Review by David Waterfield

Frontiers

Release Date: 22 August 2014

Adrenaline Rush’s lead vocalist Tave Wanning first tasted success as a nine year old girl as one half of Swedish pop duo Peaches, who scored a massive hit across Scandinavia with their Aqua-esque debut single ‘Rosa Helikopter’ (Pink Helicopter) in 2001. She’s come a long way since then and this album was originally conceived as a solo project in collaboration with writer/producer Erik Martensson (Eclipse, W.E.T.) before recruiting a bunch of young musicians from bands around Stockholm and it evolved into the debut release by Adrenaline Rush.

Collectively they have produced an excellent album of high energy, no nonsense rock ‘n’ roll that captures the spirit and vibe of the halcyon days of late eighties/early nineties commercial hard rock: heavy guitars, huge hook lines and big production, all delivered with lashings of glamour and attitude. Digital single ‘Change’ is a good indication of what the band is about – and it’s something of a belter; powerful, punchy, a huge hands-in-the-air chorus and a blistering guitar solo halfway through. What’s not to love?

There’s plenty more where that came from; the feisty opening track ‘Black n Blue’, the anthemic ‘Too Young To Die’, the fist-pumping chorus of ‘Generation Left Behind’ while shades of Def Leppard’s ‘Let’s Get Rocked’ permeate the rhythm of ‘Oh Yeah!’ Only the mid-tempo ‘When We’re Gone’ provides a pause for breath and reflection. Tave Wanning clearly has a genuine passion for this genre of music and the gorgeous young singer undoubtedly has style, sex-appeal and charisma in abundance. Her vocal style is quite light – which won’t be to everyone’s taste – although the combination of melodic hard rock and edgy, pop vocals worked for me.

Adrenaline Rush’s debut doesn’t break any new ground and there’s nothing here that you won’t have heard before, but I listened to the album with a big silly grin on my face and the chorus of ‘Want It All’ has been going round in my head all week. It’s a promising debut from the young Swedish band and hopefully we’ll get to see them here in the UK soon. I “enjoyed the rush” – if you’re a fan of melodic rock, maybe you will too.

Adrenaline Rush – 20148 out of 10

Track Listing

  1. Black n Blue
  2. Change
  3. Generation Left Behind
  4. Girls Gone Wild
  5. When We’re Gone
  6. Want It All
  7. Too Young To Die
  8. Oh Yeah!
  9. No No No
  10. Playin’ To Win
  11. Hit You Like A Rock