Finland’s JJ Pinestone earns his corn mainly from his activities in thrash metal band TakaLaiton; Taking a break from the day job, he’s formed a pseudonymous solo band with which to explore the many and varied charms of eighties metal.

Although the PR blurb accompanying the album inevitably mentions Guns N’Roses, Ratt, Bon Jovi, Poison and Mötley Crüe, JJP actually sound like none of these bands; if you had to finger a ‘hair’ influence it would probably be Dokken or maybe Skid Row, but at their most effective, as they are on the stonking Fools Anthem, Pinestone’s heavier influences come to the fore with the upshot being a sound more akin to a metallic Madball than anything else.

Overall, Break The Chain is a refreshing look back at a decade increasingly hidebound in ironic pisstaking or a shit scared reliance on nostalgia to get things done. Break The Chains is neither of these things, rather taking music’s greatest decade as a touchstone to explore the artists’s own love for the music. Scream For More is an exuberant piece of rabble-rousing rock n’roll which manages to meld a bit of nineties punk into the mix; But whoever influenced the track it’s hard to deny the thumping rhythms, impossible not to get caught up in the gang-vocalled glory of the chorus. And that’s what great music, from any decade, should do to the listener, no?

Closing track Chiefs of Speed bears more than a passing resemblance to something that would like to be the Cruel Intentions when it grows up, and perhaps that’s a good pointer to the overall sound that JJ Pinestone is trying to generate. Be that as it may, they’ve generated enough excitement over the course of the seven tracks that make up this record to suggest that whatever they come up with next will be well worth a listen.



Break The Chain releases on December 13th.