Stephen
The eight album of German's melodic rock act, Frontline, was released in 2006, following the 2004's "The Seventh Sign", with no change of formation. A brief description of what Frontline offered in "Circles" is probably a throw of Def Leppard, a trace of Giant, and a drop of Journey, all wrapped in a darker mood. While the combination looks promising, the songwriting and the whole rhythm section suffers from anything memorable. Kaemmerer's voice was mostly reverbed , giving a hint of mysterious nuance to their music, but his delivery is just too flat, calm, and average. Boebel's guitar fill is acceptable but somehow it just felt too safe. The bass and drums are played the way they supposed to play with no extraordinary experimentation.
There are couple of great tracks here such as the great midtempo "Save Me", a stunning power ballad, "Did You Ever (Taste The Pain)", and "Don't Run Away" with its nice chorus. Several other songs just flows decently, for example, "No One", "It Is You", or "Say What You Have To Say", I think they should've done better. And with half of the albums can be categorized as filler or passable tracks, "Circles" is definitely for diehard fans only or anyone who’s fond of later-day modern/dark-edge melodic rock style.