Location: San Dona Di Piave / Revolver klub / Italy
Date: Friday, 16 September 2022
‘Turbo glam metal revival riders’ — Finland’s Reckless Love, hailing from the city of Kuopio, are with over two decades in the game one of the central figureheads of the vivid and vibrant revival of the Sunset Strip era and the unforgettable debauchery that rock history writes about the eighties. A wave that started in Scandinavia and from which no one can escape anymore. This reads as nostalgia. Yes. These lines come from the fingers of someone who was a ‘complete kid’ in the eighties. Reckless Love, on the other hand, are guys in their mid-thirties who were barely born in the mid-eighties. Their moms, though, were surely going wild in late pregnancy to the then-fashionable rhythms and licks of the iconic, carefree party-time world of Skid Row, Def Leppard, Journey, Poison, Motley Crue, Ratt, Firehouse, Danger Danger, Winger… I won’t go on listing. Something the quintet’s members were happily infected by. Already in the embryonic stage of development.
Before Reckless Love, the stage at half past eight in the evening was taken over by Italian glam metallers Speed Stroke. A band founded in 2010 in Imola, they hit the stage still fresh off a successful slot at the Belgian Glam Slam festival, from which they’d returned home just a few days earlier. Speed Stroke came to their Revolver klub show like they were made for it. They’re considered one of the better Italian rock outfits in the business of reviving the sound from the turn of the eighties into the nineties. A polished, tight, committed performance, excellent rapport with the crowd. All of it confirmed that the band is incredibly cohesive and that its members breathe as one for their music. Road miles and experience. In abundance. The band presented their latest and overall third album “Scene of the Crime” (2020). The stormy carousel of glam metal anthems the guys kicked off with the new Heartbreak, and their own setlist mass was spiced with material from all three studio albums. So came The End of This Flight, Demon Alcohol, From Scars To Scars — all from the second album “Fury” (2016). From “Fury” there was also the excellent Believe in Me, which in the finale of the set, together with the closing crusher Age Of Rock’N’Roll — the very first recorded single in the band’s career, from the debut “Speed Stroke” — absolutely set the venue on fire. From the debut, the band also played Nothing’s True in the opening part of the set. Speed Stroke are top-tier Italian glam metal dandies! No ballads. The band bites on stage. From the first to the last second of the show, it gives you goosebumps. If you spot Speed Stroke playing anywhere near the western Slovenian border, you absolutely must check out their superb live form, backed by an excellent musical repertoire. From the latest record, the band also played the title track The Scene of the Crime, Soul Punx, and the naughty Who Fkd Who. Speed Stroke extended their time with Reckless Love by another day, as they also opened for them on Saturday, 17 September 2022, in Milan.
Reckless Love hit the stage at ten o’clock. In an hour-and-a-half concert, the band went heavy on their latest album “Turborider”, which many fans turn their noses up at, since the band went further in reviving the old eighties sound than anyone dared or wanted to imagine. Well, regardless of all that, you have to admit that Reckless Love are incredibly brave in this regard. And whoever is bothered by the production and arrangements of the new album, which push the drum machine and the disco synths of the eighties to the fore — I’ll put my hand in the fire if Reckless Love don’t return to the style of the first four albums with their next, sixth studio album. But personally, I’m not pushing them. “Turborider”, under the microscope of everything it offers and everything it doesn’t, still comes out as a remarkably well-crafted success.
In keeping with the theme of the new album, the guys also kitted themselves out accordingly on stage, though the whole thing looked a bit ridiculous. Oli’s pants especially, which did have their roots in the eighties — but in that regard he could at least have spared us and gone with torn white jeans, like his bandmate to his right, bassist Jalle Verne. A quick blast back to eighties arcade games. All the way to the era of Michael J. Fox and the unforgettable “Back to the Future”. Oli Herman jumped on stage in a white jacket and glasses as if he’d stolen them from some BMX racer straight out of 1985. The full-on party had begun. Barely a hundred people at the venue, maybe even a few less, but quite a few ‘festively decked out’ folks who were also thoroughly familiar with the band’s discography. The new tracks from the ‘pop-stamped’ album came across on stage as considerably more authentically hard rock tough than their studio production would suggest. During one of the breaks, Oli asked the audience if they’d noticed where all those samples and synths were coming from, given there was no keyboard player on stage. He naturally seized the opportunity to joke that this way the quartet keeps more of the fee rather than dragging an extra member along on tour.
Anyway. The Finns blaze on stage in their tightness. In their perfectionism. Oli is an excellent frontman. Not just vocally, but also when it comes to his verbally flamboyant stage theatrics, which he deploys mainly during the breaks between songs. In fact, he preceded every track with a short introduction and the story behind it. He didn’t skimp on vivid showmanship or a sense of humor. Reckless Love? Absolutely a perfect party-time escape. In reviving the eighties, Reckless Love are far more committed and sometimes go completely overboard in their devotion. But it’s precisely that excess and the occasional bizarreness of this new-age glam revival that makes it all the more attractive. You almost get the feeling that their whole performance is more authentic than the eighties original itself. OK, maybe I went a bit too far there, but the feeling you get when you encounter a band like Reckless Love at a concert is often exactly that. Deceptive. A sweet, deceptive reality that connects only to the nostalgia of days gone by. On a Friday evening. Despite the weather scare of that day — it had looked like the whole sky was going to dump itself on the planet (the whole thing was reminiscent of mid-September 2010) — the level of rainfall in the Veneto was considerably friendlier and more forgiving than back home.
But let me get serious for a moment. Reckless Love are no joke. There’s no messing around here, even if they like to cultivate a playful irreverence on stage. All the cheekiness and the carousel of entertainment are delivered to the audience in a strictly professional manner. In this regard, Oli used a break to thank the crew taking care of sound, merch, and transport, and of course the audience for buying tickets. He said that for him, the past two years had felt so hopeless overall that he no longer saw a future for Reckless Love. He thought the band was going to die — he was talking about the last two years. Well, his ‘six-pack-sculpted’ body also picked up quite a few extra pounds in that time, which Oli could easily donate at any point to his older compatriot, the already astonishingly lean Michael Monroe (Iggy Pop is ‘a small baby’ by comparison). That speech definitely contributed to the mob that formed at the official merch table after the show. In this kind of theatre, perhaps the only one more convincing than Oli is the irredeemable chatterbox Blaze Bayley.
Let’s get to the material. Yes. The new songs got a pleasing rocky edge on stage. Guitarist Pepe Reckless confirmed his excellence, covering an enormous amount of ground with a single guitar. The absence of extra phrasing wasn’t missed during the solos. The sound mix was excellent. The band poured fuel on the fire with a cover of Ozzy’s Bark At the Moon, which they executed brilliantly (you can find the track on “Turborider”). The new song Eyes Of A Maniac has the potential to become a permanent fixture in the band’s setlist. In the eighties, it would have been a massive hit. The same goes for the title track of the new album. When you look at the development of even the newest compositions, it’s clear the band hasn’t lost its inspiration — it just tried something new, which is actually a new experiment with things rooted in the eighties that it simply hadn’t tried yet. As said. The next album will be a return to the “Animal Attraction” sound. Don’t worry. And “Turborider” is far from bad. The creative principle is the same. It’s just the arrangements and production that represent a fundamental departure from the first four orthodox glam metal revival albums. Reckless Love know this. Given that the album made up nearly half of the setlist, they know that despite the experimentation, it’s a strong product.
In short. The band naturally backed it all up with favorites from the older albums, although an hour and a half wasn’t enough room for a few more excellent older tracks that we simply didn’t hear that evening and were mildly missed. The irresistible Monster, the only track from “Invader” (2016) that evening, and especially in the second half of the concert the run of Edge of Our Dreams (“Spirit”, 2013), then Badass from the debut “Reckless Love” (2010), and the catchy closing On The Radio from — sorely missed in the setlist up to that point — “Animal Attraction” (2011). The band, as if they’d heard my complaints. For the obligatory encore they came back and stayed right with that album, delivering its title track, then Reckless Love fired up the crowd with another track from “Spirit”, the combustible Night On Fire, while in the grand finale Reckless Love lifted the crowd with the infectious chorus hooks of the “Animal Attraction” track Hot.
Madness. Bands like this on tour are sorely lacking anywhere near Slovenia. One way or another, a similar band rarely finds its way to us. Like the trio of CrashDiet, Cruel Intentions and HighRide, way back on 10 October 2019 at Ljubljana’s Orto bar. Reckless Love delivered that evening — and we mustn’t be dismissive of the excellent support act Speed Stroke — an outstanding party-time escape perfectly in tune with a skilful tightrope walk along the legacy of the golden days of California’s Sunset Strip. A glorious rock-and-roll whirl at a gathering full of positive vibes that takes you away for a moment from the troubles and nuisances of everyday A.D. 2022. “Over and out!” Amen!
Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Photos: ‘The On-Duty Grump’ a.k.a. ‘the f***ing Kid’ & Edita Klemen
Reckless Love Setlist:
1. Turborider
2. Outrun
3. Monster
4. Back to Paradise
5. Kids of the Arcade
6. Prelude (Flight of the Cobra) (instrumental)
7. Like a Cobra
8. Edge of Our Dreams
9. Eyes of a Maniac
10. Prodigal Sons
11. Badass
12. On the Radio
—encore—
13. Animal Attraction
14. Night on Fire
15. Hot
