Stephen
"World On Fire" was released in 1995 by a Japanese label, FEMS, and consisted of their works that were mostly composed in the late 80s. Their musical style is very similar with Red Dawn, a melodic rock approach with a pompous AOR touch, driven by delicate keyboard sound and harmonic guitar layer. Chali Cayte's voice is also quite similar to Sammy Hagar, making them comparable to Van Hagar as well. Christian Pallidino also provided an exceptional guitarworks with many flashy solos. However, the bad point is the weak and disappointing sound production with some tracks are in good shape while some others aren't. I suspect this is because some of the songs are taken from an old demo tape.
Tour De Force's second album contained 17 non-filler tracks and comprised of uptempo hard rockers, midtempo melodic rock tunes, and passionate ballads. My most fave tracks here are "Tonight" that's penned by Michael Bolton; the beautiful ballad, "Coming Home"; the wonderful midtempo pomp-rock with Asia touch, "Hold On"; the Journey-esque midtempo, "Lady Midnight", and the monstrous melodic rock, "Got To Know". The rest are also very good and lovable. Songs like "If It's Over", "Sweet Adeline", "Rough Boy", and "One More Time" are hard to hate.
I found myself never got tired of repeating this disc frequently, that's because there are a lot of high quality songs with various moods inside. The vocal is good, the rhythm section is powerful, but I have to underline the real strength of this album is on the songwriting. Although it's not very original and the weak production, I can't help but to rate this forgotten gem four-stars. A great recommendation for fans of melodic rock and AOR!