Night Ranger United States

"Boy, was I positively surprised by this release. Night Ranger's tenth effort "Somewhere in California" is a brilliant hard rock gemstone which is pleasing to the ear of the melody-loving hard rocker and metalhead. There are plenty of highway-friendly hard rocking tracks with lots of power and classic guitar riffs and vocal melodies, while other tracks are a bit more advanced and characterized by some really impressive guitar work in the form of both blazing and technically impressive guitar solos and complex, yet appealing, guitar harmony leads galore. Being quite AOR-oriented, there is a lot of focus on melody, and both verses and choruses are big and catchy - especially the vocal melodies in the choruses are extremely listener-friendly. True to tradition, there are of course also a couple of ballads on the album. I am quite critical towards ballads, as you may know, but I actually quite like the ballads on this album - I mean, who needs boybands when you have melodic power ballads? Massively melodic and all brilliant, "Somewhere in California" is recommended to the melody-loving metalhead and hard rock fan. (review originally posted at metalmusicarchives.com)"