Co-produced by the band themselves with the legendary Jacob Hansen, Denmark’s H.E.R.O. have delivered one of those huge sounding, modern rock records we occasionally get offered for review here at Sentinel Daily. We only get sent records like this occasionally because it really isn’t the sort of thing you’d expect to read about in one of the World’s most straight-down-the-line metal loving publications; But – and it’s a big but – when we do get one, and we love it as much as Alternate Realities, then surely that’s a reaction worth documenting. So here goes…

Much like last year’s monstrous Teramaze album, And the Beauty They Perceive, Alternate Realities seeks to fuse huge, wall-of-sound-guitars – here supplied by Søren Itenov and singer Christoffer Stjerne – to sassy, strutting and soulful vocals. Like the ‘Maze’s Dean Wells, Stjerne has the sort of voice record companies would have fallen over themselves trying to sign in the late eighties when bands like Go West and Clymie Fisher ruled the airwaves, but this isn’t an exercise in simple, blues eyed soul masquerading as pop. Tracks like Never Be The Same and Oxygen are dramatic pieces, the basic format of the band (augmented by drummer Anders Kirkegaard and bassist Johan Wohlert) bolstered by walls of, by turns, spiky and urgent then shimmering and opulent keys in a kitchen sink production that must rate as one of the finest heard around these parts in quite some time.

H.E.R.O. aren’t quite as heavy or as virtuoso as Teramaze – arrangements are always taught and punchy as opposed to grandiose and pompous, and it’s this attention to sharp song writing that makes the album such an exciting crossover proposition. Made To Be Broken is perhaps the most overtly ‘pop’ track on offer, coming equipped as it does with a full choir of Coldplayesque ‘who-ohs’, but even here the jagged riffage is left loud enough in the mix to remind the listener that this is a rock album they are listening to; And a very good rock album at that…

Personal is an, erm personal favourite of this reviewer, but there really aren’t too many weak spots in the armour of Alternate Realities, meaning that your own fave tracks will quite likely change regularly, such is the wide choice of quality on offer. If you don’t spend all day sewing new Brocas Helm patches on your denim cutoffs, this album is well worth a punt, trust me…

Alternate Realities releases on March 18th.