Toxic Heart Ride Your Life
by Joe Mis
Staff Writer
Take Quiet Riot’s party rock sound and modernize it, add Def Leppard’s hooky riffs and catchy choruses and a touch of Scorpions precision guitar work and you have a rough idea of the sound of Slovenia’s Toxic Heart. Ride Your Life is their debut release, and it is a kick. The boys in the band definitely are children of the ’80s, but they’ve taken the old glam rock sound and brought it into the 21st century, cheesy lyrics intact.
Formed in 2007, Toxic Heart has brought a fresh gleam to the old glam – mixing and engineering their sound to almost power-metal levels. The clarity of both instruments and vocals is superb and refreshing. It is also a pleasure to just turn your brain off and just get into the music without having to deal with songs about war, crime, politics or the other evils of society. Much like a summer bubble-gum movie, Ride Your Life is pure fun without any deep concepts. The glam themes of love, sex, parties, booze and cars are all back in their faded glories and are presented in a not too serious way with great élan. If there is such a thing as the ideal “driving music” CD, this one comes pretty close.
Toxic Heart’s music lives and dies on the guitar riffs written and laid down by Mike (yes, the members are only credited by first name). Mike’s guitars are for the most part awesome. He lays down some great rhythm lines and solid solos, pulling out almost every trick in the rock guitar bible and executing perfectly. He does some crunchy and chuggy stuff, mellow acoustic pieces, well-crafted leaping and spiraling solos, and some pure chaotic noise breaks. Vocalist Axl is also very solid. He has a good dynamic range and would have been a perfect fit in almost any of the good ol’ glam bands. Axl is a little rough around the edges at times with the occasional odd pronunciation – but certainly no worse than any other ESL vocalist, and better than most. Rider (bass) and Mogy (drums) provide the bottom end quite competently, but neither gets a chance to truly shine since the guitars and vocals dominate the music. Both Rider and Mogy seem to be as talented as the others, hopefully they will be give the spotlight as the band’s songwriting skills improve. As a unit Toxic Heart is at their best on the up-tempo numbers – they don’t seem 100% comfortable on the few slower tracks, but a little more experience will remedy that weakness.
All of the tracks on Ride Your Life are solid guitar rock. Most songs have catchy choruses, strong melodies and foot-tapping grooves. All of the songs would come across great in a live venue. Highlights are the great guitar riffs and arena rock choruses on “New Generation”, “Ride Your Life” and “Love Is For Fools”, and the heartfelt, albeit sappy, lyrics on “The One” and “Baby”. Lowlights are the touches of sleaze rock and raunch rock on “One Night Stand” and “Makin’ Me Bad” – these two tracks seem out of place on the album, and may have just been added as time fillers.
Ride Your Life is a very good debut effort. There is nothing revolutionary here, but it is definitely evolutionary. This quartet just needs a touch more polish, and must take a step or two away from the pure ’80s roots to grow a little as songwriters. Shouldn’t be much of a stretch for such talented musicians. They play with great enthusiasm, and a sense of fun fills all the music.
If you are a fan of the ’80s or ’90s, or just a devotee of great high-energy rock guitar, pick this one up. You won’t be disappointed.
Label: Independent
Web: http://www.myspace.com/toxicheartofficial
Track Listing:
01 – Ticket
02 – New Generation
03 – Love Is For Fools
04 – The One
05 – Ride Your Life
06 – Eyes Of A Broken Man
07 – Big Time
08 – Baby
09 – Makin’ Me Bad
10 – One Night Stand
11 – Like The Way I Feel
HRH Rating: 8/10