UMUR "No Fuel Left for the Pilgrims" is the 3rd full-length studio album by Danish hard rock act Disneyland After Dark (now D-A-D). The album was released through Medley Records (and through Warner Brothers in the US) in March 1989. "No Fuel Left for the Pilgrims" was a big breakthrough for the band and sold really well. In their native Denmark alone the album has sold around 275,000 copies. A pretty good sales statistic in a country with a population of only 5 million people. But the album did well in both Asia and Europe too. The big American breakthrough never really came though.

The album´s success was helped along by the very popular single track "Sleeping My Day Away", which also opens the album, but there are several other D-A-D "classics" on "No Fuel Left for the Pilgrims" like "Jihad", "Rim of Hell" and "Girl Nation". All delivered with the trademark "gleam in the eye" humourous D-A-D hard rock style. Around this period of the band´s career, they were often lumbed in with the glam metal pack, but besides the sparse use of make up (which was something every other band did in the eighties), there´s little here that sounds like glam metal to me. This is through and through sweaty and melodic hard rock delivered with conviction (their cowpunk past is heard a couple of times during the playing time but that part of their sound is not dominant on this album). The tracks are vers/chorus stuctured and hook laden. The kind of tracks you can sing/scream along too and remember when the album is over. When that is said, not all tracks stand out equally much, but overall "No Fuel Left for the Pilgrims" is a pretty consistent high quality release.

Jesper Binzer´s raw vocal delivery and little brother Jacob Binzer´s lead guitar work are among the highlights regarding the musicianship on the album. The drumming is almost too simple for it´s own good, but that´s probably an aquired taste.

Featuring a strong (but at times almost too polished) sound production "No Fuel Left for the Pilgrims" come off as a really great hard rock album on almost every parameter. If all tracks had been of the quality of the best tracks on the album this would have been a hard rock masterpiece, but as there are a couple of more standard quality tracks featured on the album too, I´d say a 3.5 - 4 star (75%) rating is fair.

Stephen After more than 20 years building up their career, I don't think this weirdly-titled album is the best choice to entertain the long time fans. Not only it's pretty far from their golden era, the latest release from D.A.D is basically poor in songs quality, felt unfinished, and too modern for my taste. Out of twelve tracks presented here, the really worthy track to listen here is only 'Fast On Wheels'. This is an upbeat, easy listening piece, with a solid riffs and a very catchy chorus. The next best track here is the last ballad, 'Your Lips Are Sealed'.

Another worthy track here is probably 'Breaking Them Heart By Heart' and 'Drag Me To The Curb', but wait until you hear 'The End', completely awful, or 'The Last Time In Neverland', unlistenable at all. 'The Place of The Heart' is a bold attempt to emulate LED ZEPPELIN, but somehow the song itself doesn't have the real strength to be a hit.

The production is great though, but sadly, too many average and passable songs, and if this is gonna be their swansong, it's a shame. Sometimes I just don't get it why wouldn't they made something very similar to their early era because almost nobody wants to listen to an old bands except the old fans. Good thing for bands like RATT or DOKKEN to realize this thing quickly or I bet they'll ended up fading away soon off the scene. Avoid!

UMUR Draws a Circle is the 2nd full-length studio album by Danish hard rock/ heavy rock act D-A-D ( then called Disneyland After Dark). The album was released in in June 1987 by Mega Records. Draws a Circle was produced by Mark Dearnley, who had worked as a studio technician on "Highway to Hell" by AC/DC ( the sound is decent but nothing special).

The band started out playing something as unconventional and un-Danish as cowpunk on their debut album "Call of the Wild (1986)". The music on Draws a Circle still have more than a few traces of that style, but it´s on this album that D-A-D started playing hard rock/ heavy rock and tracks like "Isn´t That Wild", "I Won´t Cut My Hair" ( which would later appear on the US version of the band´s 4th full-length studio album "Riskin' It All (1991)") and "God's Favorite" are probably the best examples of that. As mentioned the band had not completely given up their country/ cowpunk sound yet though and the America cover "A Horse With No Name" ( which on a sidenote is excellent) and "Black Crickets" are examples of that style. The band also venture into gospel rock territory in the song "There's A Ship", so bearing the eclectic nature of Draws a Circle in mind the album will probably appeal the most to an open minded hard rock listener.

I think there are some absolutely lovely tracks on i>Draws a Circle like "Isn´t That Wild", "I Won´t Cut My Hair", "God's Favorite" and "A Horse With No Name", but infortunately not all tracks on the album reach the same high quality level and there are a couple of rather forgettable tracks on the album too. So somewhere between a 3 and a 3.5 star rating is warranted. I guess I´ll be a proud nationalist this time and give out a 3.5 star rating.

UMUR "Riskin' It All" is the 4th full-length studio album by Danish heavy/ hard rock act D-A-D ( then D.A.D.). The album was released in October 1991 by Medley Records. "Riskin' It All" was meant to be D-A-D´s big breakthrough in America ( the band even changed their name from Disneyland After Dark to D.A.D. to avoid possible lawsuits from the Disney corporation. They changed it again later to D-A-D) and the album was released in the USA through Warner Brothers. That marriage didn´t end happily though as D-A-D was fired by Warner Brothers as a result of poor sales ( well that was the labels opinion anyways). Other than the failed US adventure the album sold fairly well other places in the world though ( Scandinavia, mainland Europe and Japan).

The music style on the album pretty much continue the heavy rock/ hard rock style the band started playing on the preceeding album "No Fuel Left for the Pilgrims (1989)" albeit with a bit more commercial sensibility. The album spawned three "hit" singles in "Bad Craziness", "Grow or Pay" and "Laugh 'n' A 1/2". Thorleif Hoppe´s cartoonish music video for "Bad Craziness" is legendary. There are several hard rocking tracks on the album like "Bad Craziness", the title track ( the hardest/ most "metal" track on the album), "Makin' Fun Of Money" and "Rock 'n' Rock Radar", but the album also displays other sides of the band´s sound. For example "Grow or Pay" which is a power ballad type track, "Down That Dusty 3'rd World Road" that has the country type feel that the band were known for on their early albums and "Laugh 'n' A 1/2" which is a classic acoustic guitar rock ballad. All in all a quite varied album. As always with the humourous/ comical lyrics that D-A-D excel in.

The musicianship is excellent. I like how much room the two-string bass playing by Stig Pedersen is given in the mix, the solid drumming by Peter Lundholm Jensen, the attitude laden vocals by Jesper Binzer and the brilliant lead guitar/ twang guitar work by little brother Jacob Binzer.

The album is well produced by Nikolaj Foss, D.A.D. and Lars Overgaard. Lots of hard rocking power in that sound.

"Riskin' It All" ( while not as successful in the US as expected) did very well in cementing D-A-D´s position as the hardest rocking act from Denmark, and while the band have softened a bit over the years, playing more mainstream hard rock/ rock these days, no one has been able to claim the Danish hard rock throne since. I wouldn´t call "Riskin' It All" a flawless album by any means, but it´s an important album in my collection. About half of the tracks on this album are Danish hard rock classics while the rest are very enjoyable albeit a bit more standard in quality. A 3.5 - 4 star rating is warranted.

Time Signature Are we alive here...

Genre: alternative metal

Having released a post-punk/cowpunk album, a punk rock album, a heavy metal albums, and a hard rock album, D-A-D turn to alternative metal on this album, bbviously inspired by the grunge and alternative rock and metal waves of the time. "Helpyourselfish" is probably D-A-D's heaviest album and contains some of the bands, for my money, best works of their entire career. A lot of the tracks involve diminished and augmented chords which were reintroduced into popular rock music through the alternative rock, as well as groovier pentatonic and blue-note based riffs (which were emphasized by RATM, another important actor on the alternative metal scene). Production-wise, the album has a crisp, yet unpolished sound which suits the musical style very well.

I'd recommend this album to fans of 90s rock music, be it grunge, alternative metal, alternative rock, or noise rock, or even gothic metal. It's really an underrated album on the international scene of heavy music.