Stephen
Shannon's debut in 2003 farmed a lot of great praises and that's probably beside it's very rare to find a French band playing late 80s American melodic rock, the quality of this album is in fact surprisingly high. I bet Shannon was listening to Danger Danger, Firehouse, and Poison a lot to be able to create such nostalgic atmosphere but not necessarily drowned as copycat.
Out of thirteen tracks presented here, I found myself liking all tracks except "Scared of War" which I think a really bad filler. Several really strong tracks which you should pay attention at first are the midtempo "Heartbreaker", the ballad "She's A Liar", the fast-paced "Young N' Tough", the heaviest track with big NWoBHM nods "Reach For The Sky", the tense melodic rock with blazing riffs "Goin' Crazy", and the fantastic closer "One In A Million". Those are the heroes of the album and the reason why I didn't give this a five stars is because the originality value is almost nothing, and the rest of the tracks are good at best.
Sometimes honestly you found several tracks like "Wild, Wild, Wild", "Love In Hollywood", and "Lovehunter" have that hidden potential to be big but those notes composition behind them, don't know why, they have a slight tendency to bore the listeners. Singer Del Valle's effort to omit the accent is worth noticing, he's able to hit some difficult notes perfectly and sung very good here. All in all, Shannon's debut is more than satisfying, if you're craving for delicious melodic hooks from Paris, you know what to buy.