Despite Italian rockers 17 Crash professing a love for all things eighties and glam, it’s not really until track four on their new album, Stamina, the stop-start strut of Soul, that you get so much as even a whiff of spandex or hairspray. In fact, the Metallicaesque intro piece and subsequent two tracks, Higher and My World, all point to a different musical eighties obsession from the eighties – thrash.

Both tracks sound like something that Deris-era Helloween would be proud to put their name to, but, despite the metal quotient remaining high throughout the album thanks to the muscular guitar contributions of Wildcat and CJ Blackdog, by the time Keep Yourself Alive with it’s honking saxes and big ballad In My Dreams hit the speakers it’s very much business as usual for the band.

That’s all well-and good, but this melodically-led, nostalgia-filled brand of Euro metal is a bit of a musical boom town at the moment, and to truly thrive you need material of the highest order to survive. And at this point, or on this album at least, it doesn’t look like 17 Crash possess the ammunition to give the likes of H.E.A.T. or Eclipse a run for their money at the top of this particular table.

That said, there’s still a solid album here for lovers of well-played, well-sung melodic metal. Standout track Flashing Lights contains all the drama of early Bon Jovi, flashy n’memorable solo and all, whilst Brand New Way is a well-constructed piece of thoughtful balladry from the White Lion school. But at the end of the day there’s just a little too much padding to make this a truly essential release.

Stamina is out now.