Well, well, well… what an absolutely glorious racket Denmark’s Cold Drop make!
After a slight misstep with second track All Night Baby – and even then the track’s only crime is that it sounds a bit like Sammy Hagar at his most ‘exuberant’ – the band then plunge headfirst into nine tracks that celebrate everything that made eighties rock and metal great. If you’re not exhausted yet wearing a huge, gormless grin on your face by the time closing track Freedom finishes, well… you’re not the full-force rock’n’ roller I took you to be…
Built around the quite titanic vocal capabilities of Allan G. Pedersen, a man who melds the afore-mentioned Hagar and Paul Stanley into one easily-digestible packege, this is a band that clearly knows how to let the good times roll, delivering a wide, all-encompassing sound that takes in everything from the metallic dynamic of Iron Maiden (the euro metal punch of Don’t Wake Me Up) and Dio (standout track My Precious Metal Heart) through dramatic, Teslaesque hard rock (Looking for Love) to sumptuous, classy, UFO-inspired classic rock (Don’t Count Me Out).
But whilst the band wears it’s influences unapologetically on it’s spandexed sleeves, there’s never a moment when those influence threaten to overwhelm the songs. Pedersen has too much of his own personality in his voice to allow that to happen whilst the collective of musicians around him (Pretty Maids alumnus Rick Hanson on guitars, fellow six stringer Thomas Moeller Hansen, bassist John A. Bertz and drummer Henrik Rohde Jensen) are tight and experienced enough to know when to make the tributes stop and let their own music do the talking. It’s a fabulously well-executed mix, and one that you’ll find yourself returning to again and again to wallow in the sheer fun of roustabout rockers like Sweet Lucille.
Some may find all this a bit outdated, a little ludicrous even, but they are welcome to stick to whatever po-faced modern music it is that floats their sour, joyless puritan boats… me? I love a good time all the time, and I can see Cold Drop providing the soundtrack to those good times for a fair while to come – trebles all round!
Cold Drop releases on February 27th.
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