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Pretty Wild: Pretty Wild

Melodic (Sleaze) Hard Rock/Metal

4.0/5.0

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Dead End Exit Records
by Craig Hartranft,  02.01.2014

Observe the album cover and band photo, and I'll give you three guesses to what kind of music Pretty Wild plays. The first two guesses don't count. Yeah, it's basic Eighties sleaze hard rock and metal. Pretty Wild is still surfing the wave of the New Wave of Scandinavian Sleaze Metal

Pretty Wild:: just damn pretty.

And you know what? Pretty Wild is quite good at it, too. They get the genre's basic points: strong melodies, hooks in lyrics and arrangements, defined vocal harmonies, big guitar solos, a solid rock groove in the rhythm section, and all spiced with some punk rock sneer, while remaining radio and arena friendly. What more could you ask for. And you get a lot of it, too, 14 songs at better than 53 minutes.

This might, for some suggest, some repetition and redundancy on Pretty Wild's part. Surprisingly, while the musical theme remains melodic sleaze hard rock with a metal across the disc, there's enough nuances between songs to offer variety. Real arena rock anthems come with such songs as Are You Ready and Get It On, more heavy and speedier metal with Staring at the Sun or Blow the Night Away, which pumps up the groove. Pretty Wild also gets that those Eighties Sunset Strip bands could rise or fall by the addition of a ballad (or two) to an album. Think Motley Crue's Home Sweet Home. Both All I Want and High Enough blur the line between arena rock and ballad, with the latter song seriously soaring in crescendo in the end.

While hardly a fault, some songs could have been shorter, bringing the ones over four minutes down to the three and half mark. Alternatively, maybe the band should have shaved three or four songs, leaving them for the next album. They certainly to the talent to write good songs. Ending on a relatively positive note: production is solid and crisp, but it makes me wonder if the band depended upon autotuning. Nevertheless, here's another Swedish band time-warping us to the Eighties and delivering some fine and entertaining melodic hard rock in metal in the sleaze tradition. Recommended.

Note: All Amazon advertising in this review first benefits the artist, then Craig Hartranft also receives a residual. Click, and thanks for your support.

Here's Pretty Wild, another Swedish band time-warping us to the Eighties and delivering some fine and entertaining melodic hard rock in metal in the sleaze tradition.

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Three years have passed since Sweden's Cruzh dropped their second long-player, Tropical Thunder, also introducing their new singer, Alex Waghorn. Now the band returns with The Jungle Revolution ... [ Read More ]