Super Eurobeat 181

1.Marko Polo - Jungle Fever (Delta)
People who've enjoyed the past hits under the Marko Polo title must be somewhat surprised when this track starts playing. The explosive energy of such hits as Hai Hai Hai (Dance Across The Nations) or Stop Your Self Control is still present with Jungle Fever but it's still clearly different from what it used to be in the past. The change in vocalist has had an effect on the track since it does feel slightly out of place, but it's not necessarily a step for the worse, just a question of getting used to. The song itself suffers from some rather odd composition choices, like the excessive use of a lion/tiger roar that quickly becomes more of an irritation than a positive side. The chorus is clearly what hooks the listener the best, but it just doesn't quite deliver it all the way for some reason, not sure what the missing element is, but it's just missing the last nail from the coffin. A good song to open an album with, but it could also offer so much more in my opinion, since the track does have a lot of potential.
Rating : 8+

2.Go 2 & Christine - Blood On Fire (SCP)
Eurobeat artists covering songs from Japanese artists may not be a very common thing, but every once in a while it happens and I have to say I've been more than pleased with the ones I've heard. The AAA's track Blood On Fire didn't necessarily charm me that much when I heard it originally, but somehow this version by the SCP superstars had a totally different impact on me. Insanely addictive bass backed with superior eurobeat sounds makes this one of the most impressive eurobeat tracks SCP has pushed out in quite a while. What I find charming about SCP productions is how they pair up male & female vocalists together so commonly and they seem to work time after time perfectly. Blood On Fire is all around perfectly produced eurobeat with great singing by Ace & Christine and to back that up with aggressive and energetic rapping by Fastway you get a real floorfiller.
Rating : 10+++

3.Daniel - My Heart Radio (Delta)
After the awesome performances Daniel released on SEB179 I had my hopes up for a similar highground for this title. But having high hopes can be a bad thing, as it was with this case. My Heart Radio starts off with amazingly annoying intro, can't say I've often been annoyed by song as much as I was with this one after listening to it for 30 seconds. What I found most striking this time around is that the soothing and sexy voice that made Frontal Impact a hit doesn't seem to be able to create any of the similar edge anymore. The track sounds strangely incomplete although a lot of nice elements are present it feels like they've just been thrown together without giving an excessive amount of consideration on how they work together. A confusion is what I'd call this.
Rating : 7-

4.Linda - Love Desire 2007 (Time)
Okay, I am not the one to get all swoony over all of these remakes we're getting monthly now. I've given a complaint or two about how Time could stop doing all of these remakes and spend that time to work on new masterpieces instead, but this one time I'll give in and give a few compliments. The way we've mostly been given remakes out of tracks that are very widely known and heard on a 100 albums previously has damaged the edge of some of the tracks. This time around the Macho Gang original isn't exactly the most popular song so it feels a lot more fresh and catchy for some reason. The remake itself doesn't necessarily offer a lot of changes to the original but when the original track was effective and catchy it doesn't really need it for sure. A nice song, turned just a bit more modern, either you love it or you hate it.
Rating : 9-

5.Jeff Driller - Back In Danger (HI-NRG Attack)
HI-NRG Attack has been doing a solid work lately with their productions and Jeff Driller follows this path with yet an another catchy and effective track. The song sounds suitable to be a Franz Tornado song backed with some female vocals, but in it's current form it also works nicely. Great vocal work is what keeps the song flowing nicely, the traditional HRG sounds work nicely but won't offer anything new. So you can pretty much say in advance if you like this song, HRG fans surely will.
Rating : 9

6.Cherry - Abracadabra (Delta)
Delta keeps covering popular 80s songs every once in a while, occasionally these turn out well but sadly not this time around. Cherry is hardly the first person to cover the classic Steve Miller Band song, and due to the fact that I've heard quite a few covers that were made a lot better I had a hard time enjoying this one as much as I possibly could've. The song itself is a classic for most of the people who grew up listening to 80's music and it might be a tad hard to rework it into a eurobeat format, so I don't really blame Delta for how it turned out. I'm quite sure there are people who are going to enjoy this, but I'll probably rather listen to the dance version S.O.A.P. did.
Rating : 7+

7.Alexis - Beautiful (Time)
Time females tend to be a bit of a clear division for most eurobeat listeners, you either love the slower and thinner & airy kind of stuff they release, or you simply don't. Beautiful is just like most of the earlier tracks we've heard from Time's female army. If I honestly put the last 5 Alexis/Rose/Helena songs together I would never recognize one song from the other, these productions just lack imagination all around.
Rating : 6-

8.Maddy Layne - Lovers In The Night (HI-NRG Attack)
Maddy Layne may just be one of the very few HI-NRG Attack titles that have kept a very high and solid level with every single production, Lovers In The Night is just a perfect song to follow the array of older releases. The song starts off with a superior intro that uses simple yet very catchy sounds and very soothing vocals. HI-NRG Attack may not have been the best label to push out very well sung vocals due to excessive use of high pitched vocals, and even though pitching the female vocalist this time around again is present, it still sounds very beautiful for some reason. The song features a killer chorus and excellent verses which even exceed the chorus quite surprisingly. About everything in this track clicks perfectly and the way the track builds up the thrill from the chorus to the verse to the bridge to the chorus and to the c-verse, everything just sounds marvellously thorough.
Rating : 10

9.Chris Stanton - Take A Frame (Time)
Time's trend of slowing down their productions to a disco-esque style has been somewhat contradictional to the eurobeat community. There are fans who absolutely love this new mixture, then there's a half that can't stand them, but I guess it's the usual love & hate way as with everything else. I can't call myself the biggest fan of disco in general, but there have been some great tracks under this style as well. Take A Frame is quite the metamorphosis of different styles, it sounds like eurobeat, pop and disco at the same time. The sounds and pace of the track are very pleasant and the vocals also work really nicely. But what actually bugs me the most about the song is the engrish lyrics that sound even too bulky for a eurobeat song in my ear. There are quite a few points where the lyrics just jump out and irritate me to the fullest. Other than the bad lyrical work, I can't really say much bad about the song, just not my type of song as a whole.
Rating : 8½

10.Jay Lehr - I'm Alive (SCP)
This new stallion from the SCP-stable didn't quite convince me with his first track but due to not having any expectations I was surprised pleasantly. The track sounds very unique and different from most of the SCP productions, it even has a slightly Time-flavorish mood to it.  What I found amusing every single time is how the intro sounds exactly like the intro from one ancient Finnish eurovision song contest track. This might have had a thing or two to do with the fact that I keep thinking of ESC every time I listen to the track. The Europeans who read this will understand me, and naturally we all have our different point of views on how we appreciate ESC as a competition. But I'd be more than pleased if I heard a track like this from Italy in there.
Rating : 9+

11.Nuage - My Blue Sky (A-Beat C)
I try to be kind with my words on the reviews when I can think of even small positive sides about songs, when I can't... well this happens. My Blue Sky just sucks, the track is plain confusing to listen to. The wonderful voice Denise is blessed with sounds distorted and odd in this track. The chorus is plain horrible, the way the verse just suddenly skips to the chorus just doesn't work at all and makes it difficult to even notice when it began. The c-melody sounds boring, and well before I give out more not so kind words I'll just call it here, I sure hope this track won't be featured on a Best Of album since it really doesn't deserve to be there.
Rating : 5+

12.Annalise - True Colour (A-Beat C)
Well, what do you know. They really did it and topped themselves, an even worse song than the previous one! What I said about My Blue Sky also apply here, just even more so. A production that suffers from lack of imagination, arrangement wise it just doesn't stand out or manage to have any kind of highlights. Boring and definitely not the direction I was hoping for A-Beat C to go to.
Rating : 5

13.Rose - Over The Sky (Time)
Well, knowing that Time can do great tracks under their female titles does always light a small sparkle of hope in me. It's just somewhat painful to have it doused with a bucket full of cold water nearly every time. Over The Sky is a production that doesn't do anything differently, nor very well for that matter. Where are the quality tracks we heard on 179? This just won't do, only hoping for the best for 182 since the titles who shined on 179 are here again.
Rating : 6

14.Mega NRG Man - Catch My Fire (A-Beat C)
If the quality of the A-Beat C productions on this album hasn't really been the highest, it's always good to notice one of their strongest performers to be present. Tomas' style works time after time, and it's mostly a question of whether it works awesome or just well. Since the previous track by Mega NRG Man was all around stunningly catchy it's slightly disappointing when Catch My Fire can't really become as much of an instant hit right away. The track has an intense and unique way of using synths and it also becomes the highlight for the track, since the structure of the track otherwise kind of suffers from repetition. Not a bad track in contrast to the earlier ABC's, but not quite the masterpiece I was hoping for.
Rating : 8-

15.King & Queen - Dance (A-Beat C)
When I received my copy of the album, the first thing before listening to it was that I typed the lyrics so I could skip doing that later. When I was typing the lyrics for this track I was like "whoa, this track must be good" since the lyrics are very wacky and resemble the classic K&Q songs like Fun Fun Pharaoh, oh how wrong can one person be. Dance is just plain torture, the biggest negative side about it to me is how there's no Elena Gobbi present at all. Throwing her away from this title is just blasphemy. Annerley Gordon is who sings the track and it just doesn't sound like a King & Queen song to me with her on board. But on other grounds as well, the only really interesting and fun part about the track are the lyrics, the rest just stinks. Maybe the very first _bad_ King & Queen song in history. And anyways, where's our king?
Rating : 5

16.Matt Land - Gunfire (A-Beat C)
A boring intro starts yet an another A-Beat C track, but fortunately this time around we're heading to a very catchy area. It's been quite a while since we had a proper new Matt Land song on SEB and it's obviously about time. Gunfire isn't the next Night Flight To Tokyo, that's for sure, but it does have it's own merits for sure. The song suffers from rather boring verses and odd lyrical composition, but what really makes the track stand out is the effective chorus. The vocals are rather amusing and memorable due to different reasons, just to name a few: the repetition of Gun Gun...Gunfire- in the chorus is god damn catchy and memorable (and sexy), yet for the more amusing side the sentence I wanna touch your sexy body tonight just sounds somehow so oddly pronounced it bugs me every time. After listening to the song more I found liking it more and more, but with some more extra work we could have had a real big time hit at our hands.
Rating : 9

17.Manuel - Gas Gas Gas (Go Go's Music)
The expectations towards GGM don't seem to be in vain, not at all. Manuel just seems to be the real king of eurobeat these days, he just keeps topping his previous releases time after time and eventually there has to be a stop for it, but not with Gas Gas Gas! This song is just so well produced it reeks of perfection in every way. The sounds are so full and effective I can't imagine Sandro Oliva & Domino getting better than this, but maybe on the next album they'll do it again who knows. Great vocals, super chorus, insanely effective c-melody and the nice bit with electric guitars just complete an already terrific track. Thank you yet again Go Go's!
Rating : 10+++++

18.Go 2 - NRG (SCP)
So we're already at the end and at the 2nd performance by the eurobeat superstars. If Blood On Fire was catchy and energetic, what do you expect from a song called NRG? Well the song delivers what it promises, an overload of aggressive eurobeat energy that will definitely please everyone who loves eurobeat. If you are here for a fast show, then this is your queue. SCP really has stepped up again with this sort of productions that don't shy away even in the eyes of random people who don't even know of eurobeat (as wittnessed earlier today at my work place by a bunch of elderly Finnish ladies). If the Finnish women who listen to slow ballads find this "Strangely addictive", it has to be.
Rating : 10+++

Final Words :
Wow, what an unbalanced album, the album offers quite a few super tracks that are just screaming to be included on The Best Of Super Eurobeat 2007, yet there is also a long list of tracks that just don't deserve to be shown next to these masterpieces. I was hoping for a great start for 180s but instead I got an album that isn't by any means bad, but it just doesn't quite handle the job like it's supposed to. Either way I'm sure that especially the people who got into eurobeat through the masculine and aggressive productions will love this album, but probably also the fans for slower beats will find a jewel or two from this album, but for me this is definitely a thrill ride thanks to the fast eurobeat what I love the most.

Final Score : 8-

The Best 3 Songs

- Manuel - Gas Gas Gas
- Go 2 & Christine - Blood On Fire
- Go 2 - NRG

The Worst 3 songs

- King & Queen - Dance
- Nuage - My Blue Sky
- Annalise - True Colour

Honorable Mention

- HI-NRG Attack for their performances!

Labels present on the album:

A-Beat C: 5
Delta: 3
Go Go's Music: 1
HI-NRG Attack: 2
SCP: 3
Time: 4

Reviewed by Bore