If you’re the type who still loves lyrics like “Take a dream and make it happen, wish upon a star”. Think ‘rising sun’ tee-shirts are still the business and hair styles should resemble close contact with a vandergraph generator then this album’s for you! Yes folks, it’s AOR, it sounds like 1985 and Action are ready for, er, some action. 

Two decades have passed since the band first saw the light of day (according to the excellent biog from Frontiers – other record companies take note) and I doubt Action have changed style a single iota in all that time. They’ve had various guises over the years and think now is the time to have another crack at it.  

What is remarkable – when you do the sums – is that the band must have spent seventeen of the last twenty-two years being unfashionable! To get it all back together now is extraordinary. Whether or not the pain has been worth it will all depend on whether you like your AOR or not. This is vintage stuff with all the sugar coated backing vocals, ‘didge digital’ keyboard blobs, concise solos and endless songs about lurvvvvv. Why there’s dirty lurv, romantic lurv, pining for fjords lurv and just about everything else St. Valentine would be happy to discuss.  

Yes, it’s all horribly dated. Yes there is every AOR cliché in the book. Yes I enjoyed it, in a perverse way. You see there’s something almost comforting in the fact people still bother to make records like this. This album is probably too silly and has no place in the twenty-first century. No escaping that fact. But AOR is making a comeback and Action (the name’s equally silly as the album title) believe in what they do and have stuck to their guns. 

For lover’s of vintage AOR it comes highly recommended. The vocals are precise, the backing singing immense (worth an extra mark in this case) and the riffs chug along as you would expect. The whole thing is just so ironically clichéd that I must admit it put a smile on my face. Now where’s that rising sun tee-shirt?

Let us know your views on Action

Track Listing

Without Your Love
Someday
Here In My Heart
Destiny
Forever
Loveless
Don't Leave Me Lonely
Heaven Tonight
Cinderella
Feel The Fire
Is It Love

Line Up

Jack Marques -Vocals
Chip - Guitars
Chris Sutherland - Bass
Ruben Demello - Keyboards
Chris Longo - Drums
Mark Duane - Drums