Sunstorm - Emotional Fire

It was about time for Sunstorm to strike back again after “House of Dreams” which was released in 2009. The first self-titled album of Sunstorm in 2006 was one of the best AOR albums of that year… so, what do they have to give us in 2012?

 

The band which consists of the vocalist Joe Lynn Turner (Rainbow, Deep Purple), the bassist Dennis Ward (Unisonic, Pink Cream 69, Place Vendome), the guitarist Uwe Reitenauer (Pink Cream 69), the keyboardist Gunter Werno (Vanden Plas) & the drummer Chris (Schmidtic) Schmidt, is once more delivering beautiful melodic rock/AOR music. Nice melodies, strong musicianship and of course a cracking production by the master Dennis Ward… while the songs were written by the likes of Soren Kronkvist (Crash the System, Issa), Tom and James Martin (Vega, Sunstorm, Khymera) and Daniel Palmqvist (Xorigin, The Murder of My Sweet).

 

The album is in the same vein with the other two releases of Sunstorm… it contains fine melodic rock/AOR songs like: “Never Give Up”,  “Emily” & “Follow Your Heart”, as well as the sensational “Lay Down Your Arms” and the fantastic ballad “All I Am”, which is one of the most beautiful ballads of the year! The album also has three very good covers… the one is Michael Bolton’s “Gina” (where Joe contributed with background vocals), the other is “You Wouldn’t Know Love” (which is featured both on Bolton’s “Soul Provider” and Cher’s “Heart of Stone” in 1989) and the last one is Cher’s “Emotional Fire” (which Bolton penned for Cher and in which Joe appears as background vocalist as well).

 

Although, you may think that this album has it all… it still doesn’t impress as much as the two previous released did… and frankly, it’s the weakest of the three albums… without implying that this is a bad album or anything like that. You will find many songs to like here but they just don’t impress that much anymore. The melodic rock/AOR fans had better check it out, though.