Once upon a time, Norwegian melodic rockers TNT were a fantastic band. Albums like Tell No Tales, Intuition and Realized Fantasies were a melodic rocker’s wet dream. Not only great songs, but also killer musicians. American singer Tony Harnell had a voice that could break glass and guitarist Ronni Le Tekro was one of the greats, melodic, original and inventive. But with so many other bands that were around in the 80’s, they split in the mid 90’s when grunge came around. They reunited later for some pretty good records, but a while back singer Harnell decided to leave the band. The guys hired British singer Tony Mills of Shy and recorded two horrible albums, The New Territory and Atlantis. Not only were they crap, they were also very experimental – and not in a good way. Confusing is maybe a better word. Why they decided on that move to introduce their new singer is beyond me. They should have, of course, made a couple of classic TNT records to show everybody that they were back and then go off on a experimental binge, if that’s what they wanted to do.
However, with their third Mills fronted album, they have tried to do just that. So does it work? Both yes and no. Soundwise and with the songs, it’s all TNT again, but on the other hand, the songwriting bit falter a bit too much. Stuff like the hard rocking ”Engine”, ”Ship In The Night”, ”Barracuda” and the Swedish titled ”God Natt, Marie” (Good Night, Marie in English) works surprisingly well. The problem is that the rest of the songs doesn’t really hold up, although not really bad and even tough mentioned songs are really good, the album doesn’t go anywhere. I’m not sure what the cure is for TNT, but hopefully they, with this album, are finding their way back and maybe next album can provide us with something tastier. The CD is superior to the last two crap albums, but they still have a long, long way to go to catch up with past glories.
Jon Wilmenius (5/10)
Track list:
01. Engine
02. Refugee
03. Ship In The Night
04. Take It Like A Man – Woman!
05. Come
06. Barracuda
07. A Signature On A Demon’s Self-Portrait
08. Don’t Misunderstand Me
09. A Farewell To Arms
10. Someone Else
11. God Natt, Marie
12. Not Only Lonely (bonus track for Japan)
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