Ammunition - Ammunition

Published January 27 2018

*=Staff's pick	Time Freedom Finder Virtual Reality Boy Gung Ho (I Told You So) Eye For An Eye* Tear Your City Down* Caveman* Wrecking Crew* Miss Summertime Bad Bones* Klondike

Genre	Melodic Hard Rock	Åge Sten Nilsen	Vocals
Tracks	11	Erik Mårtensson	Guitar
Running time	38 Min.	Jon Pettersen	Guitar
Label	Frontiers Music	Victor Cito Borge/Erik M.	Bass
Release	January 26, 2018	Magnus Ulfstedt	Drums
Country	Norway/Sweden	Lasse Finbråten	Keyboards
Producer	Erik Mårtensson	Erik Mårtensson	Keyboards
Similar bands	Wig Wam, Eclipse, W.E.T.

Scandinavian outfit Ammunition has dropped the epithet "Åge Sten Nilsen's" in front of the band name and puts out its second and also eponymous album. I don't intend to detract attention from lead vocalist, co-founder and co-songwriter Åge Sten, or anyone else in the band for that matter, but Swedish musical mastermind Erik Mårtensson is in terms of putting out awesome music time after time again arguably the most skilled guy in today's melodic hard rock industry.

Just take a look at Eclipse, Nordic Union, W.E.T. and Ammunition and you have 4 bands/projects where he functions as the main contributor to the songwriting and even if he's not the only one behind the success of these collaborations, he definitely is the glue that keeps stuff together and his sense for melody is certainly out of the ordinary. Bear also in mind that he is recording, producing and mixing, etc, as well as doing lead vocals in Eclipse, and background vocals with everyone else, and playing almost whatever instrument that is needed in order to put out a great piece of music.

Similarities between these groups are inevitable due to the pure nature of the music and because all those constellations in one way or another belong to the same genre and this self titled effort is surely running in this familiar trail as well. Personally I don't mind a small resemblance among the bands and since the end result of this record comes out so great it would be just downright stupid to not feed on the occasion while they can and it would probably be a really devastating career decision to deviate from their nowadays in a sense established sound that fans to this type of music seem to love.

Ammunition is living proof that catchy choruses with nice vocals, solid verses with kind of standard riffing and a captivating and melodic groove still is utterly refreshing to the ear and they seem to capture pretty much all the essential stuff there is to deliver an amazing experience in the light hard rock vein. The band's current status will definitely not suffer after bringing forth such a fine album and not often do I wish for longer playing time, but I wouldn't have been the bloke to complain if this one had contained a couple of bonus tracks as the ultimate frosting on the cake.

Performance	Originality	Production	Vocals	Songwriting
6	3	8	7	8

Summary
8 chalices of 10 - Tobbe