Until just recently, Erol Sora was a noble unknown to me, but as far as I'm concerned, things are gonna change! Having been a session musician, he's participated to recordings of several renouned artists, including former members of Quiet Riot and Survivor, while living in LA. Most recently, he's been part of the John Lawton Band. In the past, Lawton sang with Uriah Heep and Lucifer's Friend. To this date, Sora has recorded 4 CDs and 2 DVDs, and toured through several parts of Europe with that band. By the end of 2004 however, the JLB decided to take a break from live activities.

Which gave Erol (who plays guitar and does all lead singing) the chance to put together his own band (by his side are organist Gregory MacDonald –BigJohnBates &ex-Peppersands -, bassist Kevin Dahl, and drummer Lance Chalmers – ex-Trooper -, with Louise Porter from The Rumours doin' additional keyboards), and record his very first solo album. It shouldn't be any surprise, that Sora's musical style is best categorised as (Hard) Blues Rock. Classic guitar oriented in-your-face Hard Rock with occasional Blues, Pop, and AOR elements, or, as the label puts it, music "...for fans of Bad Company, Deep Purple, Kiss, and Thin Lizzy!" Certainly a statement I agree with! 4 of the 10 songs on the album are somewhat calmer, and that's when Sora's work is occasionally remeniscent of even more things, like "Along The Way" with its acoustic guitar intro makes me think of Lynyrd Skynyrd somehow, the Poppy "NYC" brings Tom Petty to mind. "Piece Of Paper" & the album closing "Rain" are simply great ballads (the latter is a réally great Blues ballad, with a really sensitive acoustic and electric guitar solo)! At all times, the organ has a big influence on the music, bringing in that Bluesy feeling! Erol's voice is really nice, somewhat coarse, but well befitting the style of music played on this album, and the mind boggles at the question why this guy hasn't taken the post of frontman before!

Ah, well...what else can I say but...although the album was already released in the States in '05, Europe only sees the album in its record stores starting February 24 th, and so I have no problem what-so-ever nominating it for my "Best AOR albums of 2006" list!

98/100

Tony.