Another one of those independent releases nobody seems to know of. TAINTED ANGEL is coming out of the state Florida and the fact that I picked up a copy of their album 7 years after the official release is enough to see how underground this band really is. The musicstyle of TAINTED ANGEL is easy to describe. Typical US Commercial melodic rock that sounds very cheerful. Very much in the late 80s/early 90s L.A. tradition of bands like LOUD'N'CLEAR, FIREHOUSE, JOKER, BRITTON, 1st DANGER DANGER, SLYBOYZ... I think you'll get the picture of how this band sounds.

Opener "I'll wait" is a very good example of their typical sound. This is classic 80s commercial US Melodic rock in the style of mentioned bands. Just listen to the great chorus in this song and those harmonyvocals that make you want sing-a-long. You don't hear such cheerful songs much today, but 10 years back it was a very popular genre with BON JOVI at the top with their 3 famous songs ("Living on a prayer", "You give love" and "Born to be my baby"). Anyway, "I'll wait" is just a great song that would have deserved more in this genre.

Most of the other tracks are not as good as the opening track, but still the fan of melodic rock in the 80s style can enjoy a lot. There are some lovely melodic rock/aor ballads on the CD such as "Winter rose", "Half a man" (this one reminds me of the great independent recording act BLUE RAIN) and "A little heaven". You can hear some early WARRANT/WINGER melodic mainstream rock in the song "Don't go". There is also an average groovy melodic hardrocksong titled "Back off" that reminds me of SOUTHGANG. And the simpler melodic rocker "Coming home" sounds quite like BLONZ. These tracks are the ones that keep the quality of the whole CD a little bit down.

Still I would recommend to everyone that is tired of grunge and want the good old 80s sound back. There are many new bands nowadays that play the 80s style again, but there are also many bands that released an album with the 80s sound in a time when 'grunge' was hot. TAINTED ANGEL is one of them and it would be a shame if they were ignored because it is a forgotten CD. So, if you like FIREHOUSE, JOKER, BRITTON, KNOW ILLUSION... get a copy of this CD!

It is very hard to get as you may understand, but if you contact Robert Pancur from TARGET RECORDS at the following e-mail address: Pancur@pfaffenwinkel.de I'm sure he can get a copy for you.
 

(Points: 8.0 out of 10)