Reckless Love – Turborider

Releasedate: 25.02.2022
Label:  AFM Records

Intro

Reckless Love is back in 2022 after a 6-year hiatus. InVader was their last release in 2016 and this time the hard-rocking Finns come supercharged with 80s inspired neon lights, pixelated guitar solos that remind us of endless hours at the arcade, synth heavy boulevards filled with 2D palm trees and lots of hair spray!

Review

The album starts with their first 3 singles, the first one being “Turborider”, which also had a video released at the end of January 2022. The song starts with a haunting synth line that reminds me of 80s horror followed by an electrifying guitar riff and solo which serves as a proper introduction to this retro hard rock ride we are about to get on.

With “Eyes of a Maniac”, things settle down with a pulsating low synth rhythm that leads to a catchy poppy chorus. You can easily imagine this to be the theme song to any 80s crime investigation TV-show preferably set in Miami. Let your imagination paint the rest of this picture, it has a great guitar solo section that also reminds of early 90s SEGA video games, I know wrong decade but still, very fitting.

“Outrun” is another single which had a music video released in September 2021, a very catchy and misty tune jam packed with fun and great guitar solos. This is the type of song that, when played live, the light technicians have to turn the smoke machine on to the absolute maximum alongside heavy use of neon purple spotlights.

“Kids of the Arcade” brings the 80s retro gaming feeling to the foreground from the lyrics revolving around the arcade to the solo section which felt like it was extracted from a videogame from the early 90s.  I have to say that the pre-chorus vocal melody had drops of resemblance to “The Wicker Man” by Iron Maiden.

The next track “Bark at the moon” is exactly that Bark at the moon that you are thinking about! The first thing that comes to mind is, will they glitterise and neonise this track? In short, yes they do and they did and it’s mostly apparent within the drums. It sounds like lo-fi disco drums for the most part, which is a good thing, the vocals sound amazing, this was the best cover of this song I have ever heard!

Now I will summarize the remaining tracks left on this album. “Like a Cobra” is yet another catchy 80s sounding track with a great solo and good hook, it has less catchiness than the 3 singles though. “For the Love of Good Times” and “‘89 Sparkle” bring the pop in this record to another level. These are proper summer radio hits, probably my favorite tracks on this record for this same reason, but objectively speaking not the strongest ones.

“Future Love Boy”, serves the same purpose as “Like a Cobra” did a few tracks back, just another catchy track that serves as filler between the rest of these great songs. “Prodigal Sons” ends the whole Reckless Love record with a good sing along chorus, but it misses some of those proper “ender” ingredients, it’s not delivering on epicness just on more of the same that we heard before, it even sounds like it was cut short at the end.

Line up:

• Olli Herman – lead vocalist
• Pepe Reckless – guitar
• Jalle Verne – bass
• Hessu Maxx – drums 

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