Dante Fox
Breathless

Dante Fox’s new album could have started in a very explosive way, had they used the now seventh track as the opening one on their fifth album – that funnily enough leaves you almost breathless. Just looking at this album it oozes melodic rock/AOR and that is a genre I have a real love affair with, especially the female fronted part as I think the female vocalist often outperform their male counterparts in this genre. And Sue Willets who makes the vibrations into the microphone for this band is certainly not the exception to this rule.

There is however (unfortunately) another rule in the melodic rock-/AOR-world: the one where it seems to be absolutely forbidden to offer anything that breaks from convention and unfortunately these guys follow that rule. With catchy choruses, outstanding production and songs that sticks to your mind like the best superglue, it is hard to see that AOR fans will disapprove. Good thing about Dante Fox though is that they are not satisfied to make genre-typical music that is mediocre for the genre, they make music that sweeps most of their 2016 genre competition under a very big carpet and then starts to jump on it just to flatten it some more. At the moment of writing I cannot immediately think of a band that I like better in this genre.

The fact is that I reviewed Miss Behaviour, Klone, Diffracture and several other bands before this one just to let it spin a few times more in my record player before finally deciding that it was time to write about it and move on. Reluctantly leaving this album to be played only on rare occasions – which of course is more than you can say about 97 per cent of the albums I review. So I would think that this is a fairly excellent album, not original enough to merit a rating of more than five but still. It can certainly end up on my top ten list of albums from 2016 if what I have reviewed so far is any indication of how the rest of the year will unfold. I really like this and the only weakness is the lack of originality, but excellent songs and brilliant music counter that weakness fairly well.

A dynamite album that certainly will appeal, and I could count almost each of the songs on the album as memorable hit tracks but that would just be pointless. All that I really need to say (and write) about this album is that you would have to be a monumental idiot not to give it a chance.

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