Acacia Avenue
Early Warning
2016
Acacia Avenue is an extremely melodic hard rock/AOR band project, founded by guitarist (also bassist, keyboardist) and songwriter, Torben Enevoldsen (Fate, Fatal Force, Section A), back in 2008. “Early Warning”, their third effort, sees them switching companies for a third time and features the vocal talents of Rob Moratti (ex-Saga, Final Frontier), Steve Newman (Newman), Andy Engberg (ex-Section A, Sorcerer), Torben Lysholm (Pangea, Mysterell), Mats Leven (ex-Yngwie Malmsteen, Candlemass) and Albin Ljungqvist as well as guest performances by Anders Johansson (ex-Yngwie Malmsteen, Ex-Hammerfall) and Peter Steincke (Fate). Dennis Hansen (Section A, Fatal Force) provides drum duties for this album.
While the style overall is a mature and decent hard/AOR combination, a few of the vocalists seem to have been recorded in an underwhelming fashion with the mix sounding a bit dry around them and a few end up sounding kinda too nasal. On principal this still sounds better than similar “star studded” but half-baked attempts like Slama’s AOR compilations, but it’s the signature and more experienced vocalists that really sign like, Rob Moratti (ex-Saga, Final Frontier), Andy Engberg (Sorcerer, ex-220 Volt) and Mats Leven (ex-Yngwie Malmsteen) with the rest being a little hit and miss. Some songs are pretty great but sung less than ideally like “Real Love” or “Running Out of Time”, while others hit the mark more decidedly, but the overall feeling is that of a really hit and miss compilation of songs with too many different people involved that while cohesive enough, is not earthshaking good… Decent but nothing to lose one’s head over.
While the style overall is a mature and decent hard/AOR combination, a few of the vocalists seem to have been recorded in an underwhelming fashion with the mix sounding a bit dry around them and a few end up sounding kinda too nasal. On principal this still sounds better than similar “star studded” but half-baked attempts like Slama’s AOR compilations, but it’s the signature and more experienced vocalists that really sign like, Rob Moratti (ex-Saga, Final Frontier), Andy Engberg (Sorcerer, ex-220 Volt) and Mats Leven (ex-Yngwie Malmsteen) with the rest being a little hit and miss. Some songs are pretty great but sung less than ideally like “Real Love” or “Running Out of Time”, while others hit the mark more decidedly, but the overall feeling is that of a really hit and miss compilation of songs with too many different people involved that while cohesive enough, is not earthshaking good… Decent but nothing to lose one’s head over.