Radioactive – X.X.X.

6/10

Swedish guitarist Tommy Denander is a musician with a lot of strings on his bow, more known for his range of different projects than any particular one of them. For this new Radioactive album he has gathered a bunch of not very but quite well renowned singers (most known ought to be Robin McCauley of MSG and AOR cult figure Clif Magness), and the result sounds kind of exactly as you’d imagine. All the singers perform well, the guitar sounds great, the production is dynamic and professional, and the variation skips through all the spaces between arena rock like Def Leppard, AOR like Journey and modern pop metal like Eclipse. It’s hard to say anything bad about the album at all!

But then again Radioactive is another one of those bands who do nothing at all wrong except existing in a world where there are ten thousand other bands doing the exact same thing. On X.X.X. there are no bad songs, the sound is great and the performances impeccable. But have we heard it all before? Of course. Ten thousand times.

It’s hard to pick something that sticks out on the album, but I must say it is remarkably well produced, especially in a time where lots of AOR and melodic rock albums are very slick and radio oriented. This album never forgets the hard rock part of AOR, and the guitar is in the front line all the way through. This album may not go down in history, but for those who stumble across it, and hear songs like Monkey On Our Backs, Move On and California Ways, my guess is they won’t regret lending it their ears. Because this is, let’s not forget, really quite good.