Stephen What looks good on paper turns out to be a bland output at the end of the day. Led by Glen Bridger and fronted by Terry Ilous, my fave singer back in XYZ days and right now at Great White, this album didn't show their true talents. A very laid back album, stripping down the rock and introduced more bluesy, even country feel to some songs, but Ilous' voice is still a major attraction and he's done a perfect job here.

I'm not saying it's a bad album, in fact there are several fave tracks I like here such as 'Tuesday Afternoon' and 'How Long', both has great chorus and also served as a nice openers. But too many average and plain forgettable tunes here, say like 'On The Ledge' or 'Don't Push Me', uninteresting at all, or 'Gonna Get Better', nothing's better for sure, or 'Once In A Lifetime', a ballad title that had been used up thousand times but I'll prefer Firehouse or Von Groove's song all the way.

'I'm Free', an acoustical driven track with happy vibe, is a great track and 'Live For The Moment' is a soothing piece of tremendous ballad which weirdly reminds me to La Cryma Christi, a J-Rock band. They also put up 'Heaven and Hell' cover here, not bad at all, quite good, but is it really necessary? If you're okay to less-harder version of rock, Bridger's eponymous debut is easy on the ears, but I know they're capable of doing something better, much better to be precise.

Time Signature Don't push me...

Genre: (hard) rock

Melodic and even poppy, yet metal-tinged, Bridger's eponymous debut album is a collection of broadly appealing rock tunes.

A considerable portion of tunes on the album should appeal to metalheads and hardrockers. Tracks like 'Don't Push Me', and 'How Long' are quite hard rocking, at times bordering on being metal (this especially applies to 'Don't Push Me'). And then there is the cover version of the Sabbath-classic 'Heaven and Hell' which is, of course, all out metal. Although it has been "modernized" with keyboards and stuff, it still does justice to the original. Other tunes, like 'Good to Be Home', 'Without a Sound' and 'On the Ledge' also contain hard rock elements, but these are combined with elements from other rock genres and are also of a more melodic character in general. In addition to the metal-tinged and hard rocking tracks, there are also a bunch of ballads which, while well performed and well put together, are a bit too sappy for my taste.

Overall "Bridger" as a broadly appealing guitar-driven hard rock album with just enough metal elements to satisfy the needs of more metal-oriented hardrockers while still very melodic such that it will probably also appeal to fans of more melodic rock and even pop music.