Wild Obsession

Hell Yeah! Before Axel Rudi Pell started writing ten minute plus epics every two tracks, or started wrting about wizards and magic more than Dio and Blackmore combined he wrote songs that kicked everyones ass and then some. This album is in my opinion his best work, the songs are his most aggressive, and the vocals meld with the raw gritty guitar sound to form the perfect mix. I love Rob Rock and Jeff Scott Soto but they just didn't fit with Pells sound as Charlie Huhn did and Johnny Gioeli does now. Anyways on to the music. Wild Cat starts the album and sad to say is one of the few medium tracks here. Not too exciting I usually skip it. To me this cd begins with track two Call of the Wild Dogs. Now THIS is a song to start a cd with! It is raw, it is aggressive, and it is rough. That street level quality I said that vocalist Charlie Huhn has is the most important ingredient here, it just makes this song sound MEAN. I especially love the gang chorus shouts "hey hey hey never say no" From tracks three to eight is some of the best guitar driven melodic hard rock I've heard. Slave of Love is brilliant an acoustic electric hybrid with damn catchy verses and bridge. I wish Axel would ressurect this song to perform live today. Another Axel classic Cold as Ice is next, a super fast and gritty rocker with some frantic solos all over the place and some more outstanding vocal performances by Charlie Huhn. This man can sing! I wonder why Axel sacked him after this cd? Clocking in at around six minutes Cold as Ice gives Axel plenty of room for solos and he uses it well. The breakout ballad of Wild Obsession is Broken Heart. Its a high quality ballad, with some nice singing and is well a ballad and a good one at that. Ballads dont really change that much from band to band I've noticed, some do em better than others and this is one of those. Call Her Princess and Snake Eyes are next, two songs which are played live today and are Axel Rudi Pell trademarks. Call Her Princess is a fast song in the vein of Cold as Ice and is my favorite track right after Slave of Love. Snake Eyes is a sleazy track that chugs along at nice pace and is an excellent mid tempo track. The last track in the golden streak as I have dubbed it is Hear You Calling Me. It is an AC/DC type song with the way the verses are delivered and the way the guitar is played. A loud aggressive song perfect for metal parties. Well, to me this is where the album ends. There are two more tracks an instrumental and then a closer but they don't compare to the rest of the album. I wish Axel would come back to writing songs like those found on Wild Obsession. His ten minute songs get old after awhile. I think most people would agree his best work recently has been the shorter more aggressive tracks like Earls of Black, Pay the Price, Follow the Sign and Carousel which have similarities to songs like Call Her Princess, Cold as Ice and Hear You Calling Me. Pick this up if you don't have it or dust it off your shelf if you do and hope that Axel Rudi Pell comes around to what he does best which Wild Obsession is a fine example of.