Kent Hilli - 'Nothing Left to Lose'

There are 11 tracks in total and they are all memorable, catchy and smooth – not yacht-rock smooth but rather finely crafted and highly polished modern melodic rock. A few highlights include the album opener and first single ‘Too Young’ which is both powerful and strident. By the time the third song ‘Could This be Love’ rolled around I was already making positive comparisons to Jimi Jamison-era Survivor thanks to the quality of the songs and vocals and nothing that followed did anything to dispel that notion and in my book that is very high praise. There are no outright ballads on the album but ‘Everytime We Say Goodbye’ comes close and should be sufficient for Rockfiend’s in-house power-ballad fetishist to get his rocks off, while ‘Does He Love Like Me’ features some urgent saxophone work, which is surely always a good thing.

It is sometimes tough panning for gold in a veritable torrent of sometimes average melodic rock releases but this one is certainly a golden nugget to be treasured.