Ha!
Good review, but it's not an album I can get into.
It is W.E.T part 3 (Toby Hitchcock being Part 2)... every Erik Martesson album sounds the same, and I just don't enjoy his writing style.
I want solo albums to sound more like the identity of the person who's name is on it. This is an Erik Martesson album with Jimi singing, much like Toby Hitchcock (who's real solo album would surely be a gospel country album... not a cliche'd euro melodic rock album...)
As much as Andrew dismissed it as country, the One Man's Trash album is much more Jimi's indentity, as he wrote it, and co-produced it.
Crossroads Moment took a while to grow on me, because I had to re-order the tracks, deleting a few horrendous songs along the way, but the songs that were left made a good album. Jim Peterik's writing style has got twee-er and more syrupy over the years, but when he get's it right you're usually on to a winner, and Jim's writing has been a huge part of Jimi's career and sound over the years, so that still retained something which made the album sound more uniquely Jimi,
You can't tell me that you couldn't lift Jimi's voice from any of the songs on Never Too Late, and replace them with any other project singer on Frontiers and have people go "wait a minute, this sounds too much like a Jimi Jamison song, what's it doing on this Terry Brock/W.E.T/Joe Lynn Turner/Issa/Johnny Gioeli, etc album?!"... They wouldn't, because it all sounds the same, without any identity after a while...
Niv