D-A-D "30 Years Of Hits"

AFM Records
2014

If you call yourself any kind of fan of hard rock (especially damn good hard rock!) then the name D-A-D should ring all kinds of bells! With their distinct sound and ability to write absolute ROCKERS ("Sleeping My Day Away" anyone?) this ambitious outfit (from Denmark of all places!) has been going at it now for three decades and this KILLER collection is nothing short of AWESOME! With 30 hits(!!!!!) spread out over 2CDs this one is so freakin' cool that I would even know where to start! Spanning their whole career (from 1986's "Call of the Wild" up to the band's 11th(!) studio album "DIC·NII·LAN·DAFT·ERD·ARK" it's all covered on this sweet-ass collection!) you get early tracks like (nitty-gritty rocker) "Marlboro Man", "Call of the Wild" (the title track from D-A-D's debut album is simply cool!) and "Riding With Sue" (all of which show off the band's earlier, and yet still groovy-like effective, country rock roots!) and later day tracks like "Monster Philosophy" and "We All Fall Down". I'll admit that I haven't followed this band as much as I should or could have (frankly there are a LOT of later day tracks that I was not too familiar with, but this band still has it as evident by the likes of  "I Want What She’s Got" (which was the first single off of  "DIC·NII·LAN·DAFT·ERD·ARK"), and the groovy rocker "A New Age Moving In". Logically this (soon to be released) 2-CD (Digipak) starts at the very beginning with other cool cuts (besides the ones already mentioned like "Marlboro Man", "Call of the Wild" and "Riding With Sue") like "Isn't That Wild", "I Won't Cut My Hair" (sleazy AC/DC-infused hard rock with ever-present lead singer Jesper Binzer doing his very best impersonation of Bon Scott!) and (one of my faves along with the also included "Jihad"!) "Sleeping My Day Away" showing how wicked D-A-D was and (judging by later-day tracks like the smooth "Soft Dogs" and somewhat ghoulish "Scare Yourself") still was up to and including present-day! While this might not be the first compilation album from these Danish rockers it's hard to argue that it's anything other then a great collection given the fact that it really is JAM-PACKED with hit after hit! It's certainly more than a fitting way to celebrates the band's 30^th anniversary and really, if all that you know about this Danish delight is just tracks like "Sleeping Your Day Away", "Jihad", "Girl Nation" and "Point Of View" (all of which appeared on the groups 1989 break-through album, "No Fuel Left For The Pilgrims", which EVERYONE seemed to have back in the day in their personal collection!), this seems like it would be a choice place to start as this career-spanning retrospective album is, above all friends, a blast! And really it is the first "Best Of" collection from this hard rock collective! Given how easily these guys could shift from numbers like "Bad Craziness" (radio rock at it's best this one came from the group's successful forth album, "Riskin' It All" along with represented cuts like the emotional "Grow or Pay" and "Laugh and a Half") to tracks like "Reconstrucdead" and "Naked (But Still Stripping)" (both of which were off "Helpyourselfish" which, as the follow-up to "Riskin' It All", saw the band take their sound in a HEAVIER direction) while also easily making room for numbers as different as "Sleeping My Day Away" and "Something Good". With so much variety it can be a bit mind boggling and all, but really for the reason that D-A-D was able to pull it off as well as they did. There's no real reason why softer/sappier tracks like "Something Good" and  "Nineteenhundredandyesterdaytime" should work, but D-A-D makes these kind of style-changes look simple and even weirder moments like "Evil Twin" seem remarkably in the hands of Jesper Binzer and company! So, what it all boils down to is this. Whether you are looking for an excuse to finally add some more D-A-D to your collection  or you're already a fan and want to get all of the better moments of this Danish act in one neat package then "30 Years Of Hits" looks to be the way to go!