Sunstorm-Emotional Fire

Frontiers

2012

AOR is one of those genres I struggle with. It's not heavy and no one in the fields today is doing much of anything that wasn't done thirty years ago. Yet when it's done right it's just too catchy to ignore. Now that doesn't mean it's always done right, but every year there are normally a few AOR albums that really impress me. That leads me to Sunstorm which is the project of Joe Lynn Turner (Rainbow, Deep Purple and a pile of others). This is Sunstorm's third album and like the previous two Turner reaches back to some songs he wrote for himself and other in the 80's. Although there are a few songs here written by others as well. So with that background you know this will be 80's style AOR/hard rock. However the difference is of course Turner. Much like Jeff Scott Soto, Tony Martin, Robert Mason and other s he has spent much of his career as a long time journeyman vocalist, but he has always been busy and it's no wonder. Even he has so often loaned his voice to other people's bands he has such a fantastic instrument. There are very few people I can say this about but he sounds just as good as he did 30 years ago and I doubt that producers have to do much in the studio to get his voice to this level. No, I am pretty sure he just still has the pipes to knock out whatever he wants to and still have it sound like gold. On this album he hits everything perfectly. Turner manages to not only convey emotion, but to really control every word and movement. Going into this I was hoping it wouldn't be just another album leftovers and even if it was Joe Lynn Turner easily transforms the songs into something worth hearing over and over. Great release.