When I opened up the package from Lion Music and saw "Overdrive" I thought, "not THAT Overdrive is it??". I was very pleased to find out that it was indeed the "Overdrive" from the early 80's. They were thrown into the NWOBHM even though they reigned from Sweden and they had a nice following back in the day. Now, this must be a record or something, but it's their first CD in 24 years!

To put this into perspective, their first few releases were put out on LP. Reagan was president at the time and we still had an East Germany. The irony is that they fit right into the new Power Metal landscape in Europe, hell, kids hearing them for the first time will think their a new band. Hat's off to the guys, this is definatley a great story!

Now, onto the music and the band. The truly amazing part of this story is that the only one who is not any original member is lead singer Per Karlsson. Not to take away from the bands accomplishment, but the guys have all kept busy in the music scene, Janne Stark has done a lot of guitar work including Locomotive Breath. Kjell Jacobbson runs his own label Soundport Records. Needless to say the musicianship is superb on this recording. Karlsson brings fresh exuberance to the mix with his powerful voice. Some of the lyrics and content are dated, with good reason, they were written back in 1985! Still, they manage to keep the music sounding more modern, and luckily for them they wrote more mature songs in the first place. (could you imagine these guys singing about teenage girls now? Yikes!)

Fans of Classic Rock and Metal are going to love "Let The Metal Do The Talking", it's real and it's NOT loaded with a lot of extra bells and whistles, in fact it almost sounds live at times. The title track is a strong anthem that brings me back to the days of Saxon, Priest, early Def Leppard and that entire British scene. It's a blast hearing this stuff again done by guys who were actually there! Nothing against the new Metal bands, but there's something about hearing the people who help forge the scene return to this high level of quality work. I won't to into the songs individually, they're all solid with none really standing out more than the next. It's almost like listening to one long song with short breaks, you want to keep listening to the finish.