Stephen
Seattle has become the center of grunge attention in the early 90s, many bands want to try to be the next Nirvana or Pearl Jam, but Dr.Grind is fearless enough to reject the current trend and stick to the melodic hard rock / heavy metal roots popularized by Dokken, Tesla, or Queensryche in the 80s. They managed to release a 14-tracks eponymous debut in 1994 but this disc has been very obscure, it's almost impossible to find. The 2009 release of "Speechless" is a remastered version of that album, along with couple of other rarities thrown in to complete an almost 80 minutes of immense melodic metal pleasure.
To be able to write a whole bunch of consistently good tracks isn't an easy task, even for giant bands, but Dr.Grind has the capabilities of doing that, though the songs aren't ultimately inventive and I'm sure most of the style has been heard years ago. But tunes like "Livin' A Lie", "Faces", "Tears", or "Something To Come" will bound to move your head and tap your toes. Some melodic perfection can be found in tracks like "Speechless", "Love Will Find A Way", and "Here And Gone". They didn't forget to play with ballads, "Janie" and "Time Will Tell" are simply brilliant.
The problem with loads amount of tracks is that you're gonna compare the one with the other and you'll eventually find several tracks are stronger than the rest, but it's up to everyone's taste. To me, I can live without 4-5 tracks, and a shorter and tighter album might be better, but like I said earlier, this is a great album with lots of powerful tracks to bang your head with. If you don't mind the decent production, this is a must have for glam and melodic rock/metal fans.