Review by Andy Hawes for MPM
27 March sees the release of Reckless, the third album from Welsh Melodic Rock siren Chez Kane on Frontiers Music S.R.L. Once again, she has worked with Danny Rexon from the band Crazy Lixx, who has overseen the project, bringing his encyclopaedic knowledge of 80s Melodic Hard Rock back to the table.
If you’ve heard and enjoyed Chez Kane’s previous two releases, and if you are at all familiar with Rexon’s work in Crazy Lixx, then you’ll know exactly what to expect here. If you don’t, then I can inform you that what we have here is an album of feel-good, bubblegum Melodic Hard Rock/AOR that sounds so very 1980s you’d expect the CD to come wrapped in a pair of day-glo fluorescent leg-warmers. Unlike many other acts in the genre, especially from Scandinavia who, while they admit to an 80s influence, actually have a slightly more up-to-date vibe going on, this album sounds like it could have been released in 1987, so authentic is the sound and vibe that’s happening here.
Now, regular readers of my reviews here at Metal Planet will know that I am rather partial to my 80s style AOR. Reckless definitely fits the bill although to be fair, there is enough bite in the guitars and in the pounding drums to make sure that this kitten definitely has claws!
Kicking off with the title track, Reckless wastes no time in setting its stall out in dramatic fashion. A quite ridiculously catchy riff blasts out of the speakers backed by pounding reverb-drenched drums and the kind of fizzing keyboards that the 80s built its musical heritage on. The chorus is absolutely gargantuan; everything sounding bigger than everything else with colossal layers of backing vocals driving the hookline home. It’s a utterly monstrous and begs to be played at distinctly anti-social levels of volume. And just when you think it can’t get any more 80s, a monster saxophone solo comes out of nowhere. I won’t lie: I was expecting guitar, but the sax is utterly brilliant in there.
‘Personal Rock n Roll’ is next, kicking off with a proper Glam-Metal guitar riff and yet more 80s synth pads. Once again, the whole thing is one massive multi-layered explosion of joyful, throwaway bliss. Lyrically, it does what a lot of these things do; not a right lot to write home about, but stupendously easy to holler along to and truthfully that’s fine. Taken on its own, probably not a track I’d revisit often, but perfect in slot number two on the album.
‘Night of Passion’ is distinctly more AOR and has a lot more space in the production and arrangement. It’s very well constructed and the hook is monstrous, the backing vocals really adding to it via the call and response effect. This time we get a keyboard solo AND a sax solo, which is pretty cool. This is the kind of track that, 40 years ago would have appeared in one of those brilliantly awful 80s B-Movies as a backdrop to the oh-so obvious high-school romance theme that they all had back then. Great fun.
‘Strip Me Down’ is next, reminding me of the brilliant ‘Mighty Wings’ by Cheap Trick from the Top Gun soundtrack. It’s another one that should be on an 80s movie soundtrack with yet more of what is emerging as a theme of the lyrics here. Just one look at the title should kinda give that away! It’s all a bit ‘Viz-Comic’ with its “Sticky Sweet baby turn me on…” etc. All harmless fun of course and it’s definitely a vibe that Chez exploits to the max with the image and videos that support the album’s release, with plenty of skin, teased hair, pouting and gyrating going on. Nothing new here of course, and definitely adds to the very obvious late 80s vibe which continues on the very AOR ‘Tongue of Love’ (ooer!) which is 1987 wrapped up in a spandex catsuit with teased hair and lip-gloss to the max! Brilliant AOR, where special mention has to go to the keyboard player for creating the ultimate 80s sound patch selections throughout the entire song.
Throughout all of these tracks, while it is obviously Danny Rexon who is the mastermind behind the sound and style of the songs, Chez Kane’s vocals are quite superb. She handles the raucously uptempo tracks with considerable aplomb and is clearly quite a talent. She proves this on the marvellous ‘Love Tornado’ which carries on in the same vein as the tracks that preceded it. She’s hitting some pretty consistently high notes here yet at no point does she sound uncomfortably shrill. Very cool guitar solo in this one as well. It’s the sort of track that could easily have appeared on Danger Danger’s glammed-up AOR debut almost 40 years ago.
The uptempo Melodic Hard Rock/AOR onslaught continues with the rather crassly titled ‘Bad Girl’. Easily my least favourite so far, it doesn’t take the album anywhere, sounding to me like a poorer quality version of the tracks immediately preceding it. There’s nothing particularly wrong with it, but my ears are craving something with a bit more dynamics – some light and shade, as it were. However, once again everyone plays out of their collective skins and the energy level is insanely high – a trademark of the album and one that some other acts in the same genre could learn a lot from!
‘Street Survivor’ brings the tempo down just a tiny bit and does exactly what I was craving – bring some light and shade to proceedings by taking the pedal off the metal a little bit. This is a massive AOR anthem and is actually different lyrically too which is a bonus, being much more about empowerment without the continual innuendo of pretty much everything else thus far. I can imagine Cher singing this in about 1988 such is the magnificence of the AOR mastery going on here. Absolutely bangin’ slice of AOR!
‘Too Dangerous’ is another that would have been right at home in the hands of Danger Danger back in the day, being proper glammed-up Melodic Rock. More fabulously emphatic vocals drive this track along with Chez pushing her range hard and sounding magnificent in the process before she ends the album with the similarly uptempo ‘Bodyrock’ which is another utterly glorious driving AOR anthem with an absolutely killer chorus hook! Danny Rexon sure does have access to the motherlode of colossal choruses and no mistake!! This is a helluva way to close an album, being one of my favourites from the entire collection. Awesome!
Phew! That was one helluva ride (if I may continue the innuendo themes from the album for a moment!) Ten tracks and only one misfire to my ears. The key word for this entire record is ‘energy’. It absolutely exudes energy from every pore! There’s not a single ballad on here: every track uptempo and driving, with an absolutely colossal production and mix. It literally sounds a million dollars, which, given the style it is seeking to copy, is only right and proper and massive credit to Danny Rexon who has done a stupendous job of making this sound as brilliant as it does.
Aficionados of the 80s Hard Rock/Hair Metal/AOR scene would sit this alongside the glammed up, bubblegum arena-ready fun of bands like Poison and Danger Danger and the sort of thing that filled movie soundtracks back in the day. The key words for all those bands back then were ‘fun,’ ‘high energy’ and ‘swagger’ and Reckless has all of these in spades. You can’t really take this stuff too seriously and that’s a strength of it. As I write this, bombs and missiles rain down in the Middle East and Ukraine, the cost of living continues to spiral out of control and politicians everywhere seem to be driving an agenda of hate and division. We need a distraction from all of that and this album does exactly that. For ageing rockers like me, it’s a glorious time-travel back to the care-free days of our youth, but for those still young enough, it is one of those records that provide that delicious respite we all need from the relentless misery that the world seems to project on a daily basis.
PRE-ORDER HERE
In short, this record made me smile and made me feel 20 again and not much does either of those things these days. Well done Chez Kane, Danny Rexon and anybody else involved (the review copy doesn’t list any other musicians) for bringing some care-free joy to the world! Great fun and will definitely be gracing my in-car playlists on my daily commute to work.
