Artist: Dogpound Album: III Label: Lion Music Website: http://www.dogpound.da.ru Reviewer: Paulo André

Track List: 01. My Own Sin 02. Glass Jar 03. Born A Winner 04. Human Hologram 05. Dead And Gone 06. Not Welcome Here 07. Blind 08. One 09. Other Way Around 10. In A Life 11. Away From Me 12. Undivided 13. You And Me 14. Rain Must Fall Maybe it's the fact that I'm a prog lover who happens to write for a prog online publication - which you are incidentally reading right now - but I've always been much more fond of the 70s and not so much of 80s. In fact, I kinda regard the 80s with a certain queasiness. Sure it brought a lot of good stuff to the world - Marillion, Fates Warning and some Queensryche come to mind - but what's with all the bad disco and hair metal? That means if I pop in a new record in 2007 and it brings back some of that particular faint smell of the eighties, I tend to form a negative prejudiced opinion of it right off the bat. Such is the case of Swedish rockers Dogpound third record originally named "III", which comes as an overdose of melodic hard rock with strong shades of hair metal complete with cheesy, cheesy lyrics, punch lines and tear jerking choruses - in a bad sense, if you know what I mean. Honestly, apart from an excellent punchy production by Peter Totgren and the band itself, I don't find much to recommend this album at all. Let's be honest, this format has been done to death, there's no trace of progressive in here whatsoever as it's all based on completely formulaic verse-chorus-verse with a guitar solo here and there for good measure. Not to mention the typical harmonized vocals all the way and if going heavier for the band means building a wall of churning overdriven guitars, no matter how well produced it is, I just wish they would step back and try to find an alternative path instead. Because I hate to see such good sound quality and, why not say it, good players, unloading a bunch of rehashes from ages ago. I'm sure there's an audience for this record and in all likelihood it may be a strong effort to bring Dogpound to the forefront of this particular genre, but definitely not for prog lovers. Band: Henrik "Hea" Andersson: Vocals Micke Dahlqvist: Guitars Figge Danielsson: Bass Calle "Tuka" Boman: Drums