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JOE LYNN TURNER SUNSTORM Frontier Records FR CD 302 Promotional Copy  In 1985 Joe Lynn Turner released his first solo album "Rescue You". An excellent AOR album. It was supposed to get a follow-up, there were at least 8 songs recorded for it, but unfortunately Elektra never released it. A tape of this follow-up has been around in the 'circuit' titled "Joe Lynn Turner Unreleased 2nd Solo Album" or "Rescue Me". Pretty lousy quality, but it gives a good expression what a high quality melodic rock has been kept away from us. But as luck would have it, a few years ago, when they were just friends and fans, Serafino Perugino (Frontiers Records President) and Mario de Riso (Frontiers Label Manager) used to exchange stuff and music to listen. One day, Mario gave Serafino a cassette he had from a journalist, with the "unreleased Joe Lynn Turner" second album demos. Joe Lynn Turner signed with Frontiers some time ago, Perugino asked him about that album and that was the beginning of the start of a project which brought us now "Sunstorm". Only 3 songs from that socalled "Unreleased 2nd Solo Album" have made it to this Sunstorm CD. The awesome rockin' opener "Keep Tonight", the Bon Jovi-ish "Fame And Fortune" and the great power ballad "Love's Gone Wrong". For the rest songs from other writers were picked, included half a dozen by Jim Peterik (Survivor and Pride Of Lions) with whom Joe Lynn had previously worked together on some songs meant for Deep Purple's follow-up for "Slaves And Masters" which also never saw the light of day. Although the other songs are a little less heavy than Joe's own songs, it's all top class AOR material and Joe sings them as brilliant as his own written tracks. The other musicians (Dennis Ward - Bass, Background Vocals * Uwe Reitenauer - Guitars * Jochen Weyer - Keyboards * Chris Schmidt - Drums) play all the songs really well. And the production by Dennis Ward is also excellent. The album is a collection of top class melodic rock songs in the vein of Foreigner, Journey and Toto. This could have been the album that Ritchie would have like to have done together with Joe after the "Perfect Strangers" album and cracked the American market. Still history went a different way but finally, 20 years after originally planned, we get another brilliant JLT album. Definitely one of his best efforts to date. Releasedate: September 22, 2006 (Frontiers Records) Rating: ***** (5 out of 5)  |