Label: BMG
Release date: April 29, 2022
Production: Thunder
Album length: 70.37 min.
Genre: Hard Rock
Rating: 9.0/10
Thunder are back after two years with a new album. “Dopamine”. A title inspired by the current state of society and a satirical reflection of it: “The mass siege of social networks during the pandemic lockdown, in the boundless chase for the next instant dose of happy hormones.” The album “Dopamine” was born during the band’s ‘concert idleness’. In other words, in the Covid-19 scenery.
What the legendary British hard rockers have served up with their new album is, so to speak, ‘unheard of’. Dopamine is the first in their long-lived career that’s a double. A double with sixteen tracks and over seventy minutes of playing time. And? Thunder aren’t letting up. Barely a year after the excellent predecessor “All The Right Noises” (2021, RockLine review) came out, the next one is already here, and a double studio album at that.
Thunder, who incidentally have never made a single bad album in their career (only in 2008 did they announce, disappointed, that they were heading into retirement, which they reversed in 2014 to the delight of all the band’s fans), keep forging red-hot steel. And they do it with huge, huge swagger and conviction. You could say Thunder are a kind of success story of succession to Led Zeppelin and Bad Company, effectively filling that ‘blues and hard rock gap’ with every single studio release.
Dopamine opens intense, flirty, cocky. Instantly. It’s tailor-made for all the band’s longtime fans. The opening tracks alone convince you that Thunder remain inexhaustible in their inspiration on the new album too. The opening rock’n’roll bounce is calmed down by the third track Even If It Takes A Lifetime, which has the curious quality of pushing its musicality straight onto the radio airwaves. The fifth song Unraveling leans even more on acoustics, against which Danny Bowes’s unique sensuality especially sparkles, while in the closing part in particular, a fascinating solo brings the other driving engine of the Thunder machine, the fascinating guitarist Luke Morley, back into the song, once again razor-sharp. Over an acoustic backdrop, the contrasts strung together by the electric guitar solo only get more intense.
Thunder remain at times extremely biting, playful, sarcastic, even lucid, and at other times very serious and melancholic. Typically British. Black humor has once again earned its rightful place on the new Thunder album. Last Orders is an especially fascinating number, full of interesting transitional contrasts, with a mildly ‘swung’ rhythm that shows the incredible tightness, routine and experience of the Thunder machine. Then there’s Just A Grifter with an added violin pulling in a mildly ‘gypsy-ish’ direction, and the band traditionally looks for key support in its arrangements in classical piano too, as hinted in the brilliant contrasts of I Don’t Believe The World, where female backing vocals join in as well. Cunning.
The new album, which doesn’t hide its fresh excellence, will never overshadow the debut “Backstreet Symphony” (1990) and its successor “Laughing On Judgement Day” (1992). By my estimate it’s definitely three to four tracks too long, but the band obviously felt the freshly created material simply belongs together and didn’t want to ‘improvise’ in that regard. Take Dancing In The Sunshine, which could spin easily at any time on any radio station and with which Thunder, in 2022 too, more than cunningly challenge the success of the evergreen hits that made them commercially successful in the nineties. But there’s definitely one element that dots the ‘i’, setting Thunder apart from their contemporaries with similar musical leanings. That’s simply the giant vocal charisma of Danny Bowes, which keeps shining intensely on the new album “Dopamine” too, and against which everything played across almost 71 minutes sounds so effective. Worth every vice. Musically, the recipe Thunder work with brings no revolution. But it’s all executed so well, again, that a lover of passionately ravenous, erotic, blues-soaked hard rock can’t resist the material, time and time again. It’s worth adding that such a musical pose can soak up plenty into its arrangements. Among other things, a fascinating alto sax solo in the closing section of Big Pink Supermoon. Morley’s vivid slide guitar cuts in once more at moments, as hinted in the bristling opening of the single Across the Nation. And there’s the dark, rock-wound closer No Smoke Without Fire. The album truly doesn’t lack color and dynamics.
No. Once again Thunder haven’t made a single mistake. “Dopamine” is a new fascinating record from the British foxes of (blues) hard rock, full of potent surplus testosterone and cunning tricks that the seasoned band colorfully pulls out of its sleeve, and with which it wins the poker hand of aces again and again. You pop it in the player and simply enjoy it. An album you’re far from absorbing on the first spin. But it grows on you. It accrues. More and more. Spin after spin. And it rewards the listener handsomely along the way.
“Dopamine” is, from head to toe, another great Thunder album that has lived up to each and every high expectation of the critics. Especially given that it arrives 13 months after its predecessor “All The Right Noises”, which means that in a short span Thunder effectively cashed in a highly inspired creative momentum that, thank God, doesn’t leave them in the lurch even after more than 30 years in the game. “Dopamine” will surely become a contender for one of the most distinctively accomplished and sharply igniting rock albums of this year. The album is also seriously socially critical and engaged, with some especially incisive lyrics, as the song titles themselves directly hint, like the excellent One Day We’ll Be Free Again. In short. With the ambition Thunder show on “Dopamine”, you can expect many more such ‘voluptuous delights’ from this mature band in the future.
Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Track list:
1. The Western Sky
2. One Day We’ll Be Free Again
3. Even If It Takes A Lifetime
4. Black
5. Unraveling
6. The Dead City
7. Last Orders
8. All The Way
CD2 / LP2
1. Dancing In The Sunshine
2. Big Pink Supermoon
3. Across The Nation
4. Just A Grifter
5. I Don’t Believe The World
6. Disconnected
7. Is Anybody Out There?
8. No Smoke Without Fire
Lineup:
Danny Bowes – vocals
Luke Morley – guitar
Ben Matthews – guitar
Chris Childs – bass guitar
Harry James – drums
Samo dva “stara” banda sta na planetu, katerih nove albume brez razmisleka kupujem tudi v 21. stoletju: Deep Purple in Thunder. Thunder preprosto ne znajo razočarati.
Upam, da bodo prišli kam v relativno bližino, res rad bi jih videl na headlinerskem koncertu, doslej sem jih, sicer velikokrat, videl samo na festivalih.
Thunder sem imel jaz čast gledat samo na dveh festivalih v Nemčiji, zelo rab bi ujel kak klubski špil. spominjam se leta 2008, napovedani so bili v sazlburškem Rockhouse-u, potem pa so nenadoma objavl da se bodo upenzioniral…
Dobro da so to svojo penzijo kasneje preklicali.
Drugač pa jaz isto reagiram na njihove izide, še dobro da so na BMG založbi – to pomen da bo Mueller na Čopovi v Lj ziher dobil kak vinilni izvod albuma, brez da bi ga bilo treba ekstra naročat. 😀