FIND ME: "Wings Of Love"

Rating: RRRR
Label: Frontiers 2013
Review by Kimmo Toivonen

Yet another project from Frontiers Records' assembly line, with the usual suspects behind the songs and the music? Okay, the name in the album cover could have been Khymera, From The Inside, Over The Edge, Sunstorm or one of the more well-known singers in their rooster, but nope, Frontiers wanted to put together a new project. The result is the strangely named Find Me. It is built around vocalist Robbie LaBlanc (Blanc Faces) and drummer/producer Daniel Flores, with songs provided by the reliable songsmiths of the Frontiers Empire. More of the same from the assembly line? Yeah... but you know what? As long as they've got songs of this quality, Frontiers can release as many of these projects as they like. Besides, this album might just have the best production of them all. Flores has added some "modern" touches to the album, but otherwise "Wings Of Love" has a rather classic AOR sound, I'm thinking of bands like Survivor or Journey here.

Each of the dozen tracks is enjoyable and I especially like the fact that most of them are uptempo. The only ballad "Eternally" is actually my least favourite song. It's not a bad song at all but somehow it sounds a bit too much like "an AOR ballad by the numbers". Then again, the Frontiers army of writers (Kronqvist, Mårtensson, Del Vecchio, The Martin brothers among others) have come up with plenty of goodies to compensate for it. You might already be familiar with the video track "Road To Nowhere" and its' explosive chorus, but there's more: "Another World" is an intense, hard-edged AOR song, while the more mellow "Dancing To A Broken Heartbeat" has a nicely uplifting, Journeyesque chorus. Then there's "Fireflight", "On The Outside" and especially "One Soul", all top-notch songs... the Def Leppard-like "Unbreakable" isn't far behind either.

A special mention must go to the voice of Find Me, Robbie LaBlanc. His soaring vocals bring these songs to life in a very special way. In fact, I may have to dig up the Blanc Faces albums, haven't listened to them in ages...
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