Stormwarning – Stormwarning (Frontiers Music)

Stormwarning is another new hard rock band on the Frontiers label which has been built around the vocalist Santiago Ramonda and hails from South America again showing that this vast continent is home to some genuine world class musicians.

The impressive three-piece is completed by the exceptional Marcelo Gelbcke who plays all guitars, bass and keyboards with drums from Felipe Souzza. Ramonda has followed what is an ever increasingly popular way to introduce your skills to the world stage by performing on YouTube and it was his version Joe Lynn Turner’s Prelude/Endlessly that caught the attention and ultimately led to him being picked up by the label. It’s obvious that he is seen as the next big thing with the duo of Sergio Mazul (Semblant) and Marcelo Gelbcke (Landfall) being given production duties and it was they who also teamed up for the most impressive production job on the stunning debut from Brazilian heavy metal act Icon Of Sin.

Of course, a good team can truly polish a musicians work but it helps if the material is impeccably delivered and that is very much the case with both Santiago Ramonda and Marcelo Gelbcke being consummate professionals with Felipe Souzza impressing with his percussive skills. Together, they have produced a slick heavy but melodic rock album very much in the best traditions of Joe Lynn Turner, REO Speedwagon, Survivor and Boston. This is another album that takes the melodic rock ethos of the ’80s and updates it for today’s market so that you get an album full of stadium rockers and anthemic AOR that is just so very easy to listen to. Ramonda has a great voice full of warmth and power with Gelbcke proving himself to be a gloriously talented multi-instrumentalist and exceptional lead and rhythm guitarist too.

The band’s debut is a thrilling album that announces the arrival of another new player onto the melodic rock stage and this is most definitely an impressive album that all melodic rock fans will truly savour.