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Review: 'RECKLESS LOVE/ SANTA CRUZ'
'London, Kings Cross, The Scala, 31st March 2016'   


-  Genre: 'Heavy Metal'

Our Rating:
This was the London show on Reckless Love's current extensive European Invader tour to promote their latest album Invader. They comfortably sold out The Scala and even had ticket touts outside which shows that their brand of good time glam metal is continuing to win an ever growing legion of fans.

The Scala was already jam packed for Finnish support band Santa Cruz and their brand of, well, 80s style Californian glam metal. The first song we heard had loads and loads of "Yeah yeahs" over the sort of glam that early Bang Tango used to churn out before the drugs really took hold.

The next song, Six Feet Under, was easily as good as they got. It was a primped up song about those that had gone too soon and it sounded not unlike a Jetboy B-side but not quite as sleazy. The singer was doing everything he could to work up the crowd and as cliched as it was, he was succeeding.

They did a passable version of Paranoid that got most of us singing along to it even if some of the guitar parts slightly missed on this one for me. Let Them Burn, though, had the feel of an old Seahags song, only they don't have the doomed destructiveness that the Seahags sadly had in spades.

We Are The Ones To Fall sounded a bit like Crashdiet in the Oliver H Twisted phase of the band which considering what Oliver went on to do was interesting. Wasted & Wounded seemed to be the song everyone knew and it had some rather long solos in it as the singer hammed it up and worked the crowd.

Not sure what they finished with but it didn't deviate much from the blueprint. On completion, they thanked us all and I was kind of relieved as they so lacked any originality as to make them rather bland and forgettable.

After the break the Scala went nuts when as usual Reckless Love came on stage to Thin Lizzy's The Boys Are Back In Town. Their set kicked in with Animal Attraction wherein Olli Herman was high kicking like a good 'un. He barely needed to sing the words AS the crowd was singing so loudly around us but of course he did sing and with a huge grin on his face at the love the crowd was giving the band.

So Happy I Could Die came up next and sounded pretty good with some fine guitar from Pepe as they kept the pace up and rocked straight through Favourite Monster. Before we knew it they nailed Beautiful Bomb with Jalle's bass almost being played like it was an ordinary guitar and I think Olli put his hat on for it too.

Badass Baby was next to go through this whirlwind. It had the whole place going for it. In front of us, there was a sea of arms in the air for most of the set and certainly all of this song.

Olli slowed things down a bit and thanked us all for making the band's dreams come true as he normally does before Edge Of Our Dreams. Having seen the band progress from 1st support band to headliners he's always seemed genuine while thanking us. Oh, and of course the song sounded good with some mighty drumming from Hessu.

For new song Scandinavian Girls the band were joined on stage by a group of Finnish Foxes otherwise known as Santa Cruz in drag as they had all put on make-up and tied their hair up and looked a bit girly. It was quite funny and a cool way to illustrate the song's lyrics about how hot Scandinavian girls are.

Born To Break Hearts had many of the girls hoping that Pepe and Olli would indeed break their hearts and the sooner they got the chance the better. Rock It was not a cover of the Herbie Hancock classic (more's the pity) but a new song from Invader which does indeed Rock It pretty damn well. They then went Back to Paradise which kept everyone smiling as Jalle's bass really seemed to come to the fore.

They brought the house down with On The Radio: the band's biggest hit as the place went absolutely nuts. I'm not sure more than 10 people weren't singing along to this one. It went down a storm before they closed the set with Night On Fire and by the end, it seemed like they had set the Scala on fire and left the stage to huge applause and cheering.

They inevitably came back for an encore which opened with the first single from Invader, We Are the Weekend. I'm sure this was already in the set last time we saw them, but either way it went down really well and they managed to thank everyone involved in the tour and then some before closing with Hot Hot Hotter Than Hell that had another mass sing along to send everyone home happy.

The band remained on stage for about 5 minutes taking a couple of bows and generally thanking everyone for showing up. If they keep this up by the time they next come back they will be selling out The Forum or even Brixton Academy as they remain one of the best of the current generation of Glam Metal bands.

  author: simonovitch

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