Stephen
It's always nice to see great songs finally sees the daylight, especially if those had been buried for over 20 years in someone's closet at the dark basement, and that's what happened with Allied Nation. "Touch And Go" contained 16 tracks from the past which was recorded between 1986-1992. One thing that's interesting here is to see a progression on their sound where in their very early days, the band's heavily influenced by AOR giants such as Journey, Styx, and Foreigner and eventually greeted the 90s with a change of sound, much heavier but still running on the same melodic roads.
"Touch And Go" explodes with a fantastic verse and brilliant chorus, they knew how to start the album big. "Watch What You Say" is the heaviest track here, reminds me of Skid Row and Hardline in the mix. "Find Yourself Another Fool" was once appeared on a compilation years ago, a good song but struck down with poor sound production. That's always the cliché problem of demos collection, many were transferred from old dusty tapes which pretty much impossible to perform a significant enhancement. "Love Doesn't Come In A Minute" and "1000 Tears" are another examples of wonderful melodic rock while tunes like "Life Under Fire", "Move It Up Slow", or "If We Try" are sanctuary for 80s AOR lovers.
I found it's a bit weird but you might agree with me that Jeff Nation's voice is very close to James LaBrie on his early days in Winter Rose. Solo guitars are also adequate and several songs have big moments. Several fillers are stuck at the bottom half of the disc which made me think that this disc is gonna be a blast if they carefully pick 10 killer songs and left the other behind, or even better if these are re-recorded with the current line up and with boosted sound, but I must say AOR-FM have picked the right band and time to unearth these collections. If you're a fan of classic melodic rock, "Touch And Go" is a worthy buy. And with less than 1.000 copies produced, it'll be a massive let-down if they're all gone, so go queue up and pick one.