Artist: Treat
   Title: Coup de Grace
   Label: Frontiers Records

Well it's only March and again Frontiers Records have taken the lead as label of the year because they’re continuing to issue great album after great album this year.

One of those is Treat’s 'Coup de Grace', yes you read it right, Treat are back and boy are they back with a bang.  It may be 25 years in the making but 'Coup de Grace' is an album worth the wait.  This is what the Melodic Rock scene needs, a solid driving rock album with more great tracks than you can shake a stick at.  It's very rare to come across a band from times gone by that are still able to produce a truly kick-ass album, because that’s what 'Coup de Grace' is, a real kick-ass hard rock album that defines both the band's past and where they are now.

There is enough in this album to satisfy the die-hard fans but on the same front there is enough to push the band forward to bring in a whole new league of fans.

The album opens with the intro ‘Prelude – Coup de Grace’ before the opener proper ‘War Is Over’, without a doubt a stirring opener.  It's hard to believe that this is only the bands sixth album in their long career, it shows the band still haven’t lost that big guitar sound that's been the band's trademark, but now there is a maturity of songwriting and song construction that only comes with age.  This is album that yells maturity but also says the band are still attached to their roots and both are well represented in this opening song.

It's more of the same with one of my many favourite songs of the album ‘All In’, which is to me everything that I  want to hear from a Hard Rock song, big licks, a great vocal and a great sing-a-long chorus.  This is a track that reminds me of my many trips to the city of sin itself Las Vegas.  You can almost smell those fresh packs of cards and hear the spin of the roulette wheel and the roll of the dice, but believe me the band aren’t taking a gamble with this album, this album is winner and hits the jackpot on more than one occasion to a hair metal fan like myself.  This song takes me back to the great days of Sunset Strip.

As I said before this album mixes the band's vision of yesterday and today and the next track ‘Paper Tiger’ is the latter, a real classy slice of modern Melodic Hard Rock where Robert Ernlund really shows his class as vocalist, while main man Anders Wikström lays down some great guitar work.

Well it's been great hard rock all the way so far, so why not keep it going as the band unleash another of my favourites off the album, the superb ‘Roar’.  A big ballsy anthemic slice of Hard Rock with a monster chorus that you’ll find yourself singing along to from the off, great stuff.

It's now the mid section of the album and after all the great rocking moments it's time to bring the tempo down a bit with ‘A Life To Die For’, a great mid tempo song that continues to retain the class of the previous songs, but with a more gentler pace.  If this was released in the 80's it would have been tagged "Power Ballad", but that was then and this is now, so I would just say this is a great mid-tempo ballad.  A real touch of class and one where Wikström shines as he totally makes this one with some great guitar moments.

After that short interlude it's back to the rockers, while pulling out all the stops the band produce my favourite song off the album ‘Tangled Up’, a great groove filled rocker than has you swaying and moving from the first few chords and that’s all good as far as I’m concerned, plus boy what a chorus!

The band go all Eastern Promise on us with the great ‘ Skies Of Mongolia’, again we're pushing back the hands of time on this one, then it's back to the more traditional hard rockin’ with ‘Heaven Can’t Wait’.

Again the band push the Melodic Hard Rock envelope with the superb ‘I’m Not Runnin’ and the slick sleazy ‘No Way Without You’, before bringing that more gentle almost ballad like vibe in with ‘We Own The Night’.  This one has the 80’s written all over it

Well in keeping with that 80’s sound the album continues with ‘All For Love’ before closing in superb style with ‘Breathless’.  Overall this is a real corker of a release which guitarist Anders Wikstrom defines so well.

“This is our footprint in the history of rock´n´roll”, says Anders Wikström. “We can proudly say that this is the album we would like to show our grandkids”.

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