Acacia Avenue - Worlds Apart

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Fans will enjoy this melodic rock masterpiece by ACACIA AVENUE featuring a stellar line up of vocalists, including Peter Sundell (C.O.P GRAND ILLUSION), Dagfinn Joensen (FATE), Torben Lysholm (PANGEA ,MYSTERELL), Nicklas Sonne (DEFECTO ,SECTION A) and Michael Bastholm Dahl (ARTILLERY). Also, Dennis Hansen (SECTION A, FATAL FORCE) is featured on the drums. The mastermind Torben Enevoldsen is featured on the bass, keyboards and guitars, and even sings a couple of songs himself. The worldwide known artist Carl-André Beckston was brought back again for this amazing CD artwork. Torben has worked with Carl for almost 15 years now. ACACIA AVENUE is the main project of Torben Enevoldsen, who has already released three albums under the moniker, and now returns with the fourth album, "Worlds Apart."

From there, things move fast and changes are seamless: GRAND ILLUSION's Peter Sundell takes over for the lighter Melodic Rock of the title track, before we’re Hard Rocking again with Nicklas Sonne on ‘Out of Control’ then comes another contrast with Enevoldsen himself taking on ‘Fly Away,’ the closest to AOR we get here. "Mine all Mine" is definitively a high caliber song among the eleven tracks involved. We keep that thought with ‘Straight To The Heart,’ another harder track with Dagfinn Joensen nailing it. Following with the drums and key-fueled  ‘Reaching Out’ that sounds like it was partly recorded underwater! It;s the only track I can’t recommend, and ably put in the shade by ‘Seeing is Believing’ a contender for the best track here. There’s a great shot of Blues for ‘Don’t Chain My Heart’ that follows before ‘Wait For Love’ takes us back to the upbeat fun and sun of the sounds of the mid-eighties. The album closes similarly to the way it started out with a little harder rock and the excellent ‘Chasing Starlight.’

Overall, it's a quality effort juggling and crafting with pure elements of great hard rock and AOR. The only negative point is a positive one too: too many vocal references. I got lost a little while on my extra entertaining journey.

Songwriting: 8
Originality: 8
Memorability: 7
Production: 9