Valentine - The Most Beautiful Pain (CD)

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What the hell? I got so bored with this release that I'm really in great deal with myself not to do Frontiers albums' reviews for a while, since the label seems - at times - to ink deals with each and every band/artist dealin' with the melodic Rock sound. Are you rich enough to buy the entire Frontiers catalogue at once? Keep reading! Else, move it, move it, move it!
Dutch maestro Robby Valentine (1st Avenue, Zinatra) may be a multi-instrumentalist; he might have released a good album in the early 90's - entitled Valentine (1992), if I can recall well - and has been involved with numerous projects/guest appearances/productions/songwriting credits in his less than twenty years career. He's a hero in Japan (tell me why…) and has collaborated with Valensia in the Vproject in 1999 plus some other work they did together and I can't remember right now.
Now, in 2006, Valentine (the band) release The Most Beautiful Pain, also featuring - apart from Robby - drummers Juan Van Emmerloot (ex-Snowy White) and Nop Ton (1st Avenue) on some tracks. Should I suppose the rest are 'performed' by a drum machine? Anyway, this album flirts - in general - with 'light' AOR/Pop Rock music. There's also a strong Queen influence in this album, while some tunes have quite a Harem Scarem or Meat Loaf style. Valentine's vocals are rather 'calm' (some distorted ones, too), resulting in a boring, 'overloaded' track listing of 17 songs with various keyboard sounds (blink blink…).
This album may be of average notice for - even - the 'light' melodic Rock followers. There are some good ideas present but the album's sound/production is so flat - or 'digital', you choose - that there's not much of a possibility for someone to find The Most Beautiful Pain interesting (however, I enjoyed the How Many Times tune ). Nothing more to say, sorry…