Stephen
Fronted by Hugo Valenti, whose voice and face shares a very close similarity to Journey’s most famous singer, Steve Perry, Valentine put out their eponymous debut in 1990, under Giant, and introduced a gentle blend of glam metal with AOR. Adam Holland's guitarworks here is astute and coruscating. The problem with this disc is the production is quite poor and the volume level is just too thin and low. If there's a label wants to reissue this disc, they sure have to pay attention to this one, otherwise this one is a solid effort by the band.
My fave tracks spanned from the opener "Runnin' On Luck Again" with a heavenly chorus, the great midtempo AOR of "Tears In The Night", the brilliant "Where Are You Now", to the best track of the album, "Once In A Lifetime", an upbeat melodic rock with a flawless composition. The semi-ballad track, "Someday", showed an exceptional solos by Holland and Hugo's magical soaring vocal. The beautiful ballad, "You'll Always Have Me", is such a perfect song to entice a broken-hearted girl with its pacifying lyric. I can live without the fillers, "No Way" and "Naughty Girl", but songs like "Too Much Is Never Enough" and "We Run" are not bad.
Aside from a low production value, Valentine offers a lot of great songs, especially if you like melodic hard rock and AOR. Hugo's tenor voice is majestic, if you like how Perry reached those impossible notes, Hugo is capable of doing that. The band later continued under a different name, Open Skyz, and then record a come back album in 2008, "Soul Salvation", but the songwriting quality of both albums are inferior to this one. This is a classic and enthralling record for fans of later-day glam metal, AOR, and melodic rock. Recommended!