Thunder Gods Return!!
T. G Krysinski | Medina, New York United States | 09/15/2004
(5 out of 5 stars)
"What can be said but a resounding "YESSSS!!!" Thunder returns with their brand of excellent classic British hard rock! It was a sad day around the turn of the millenium when the guys announced their retirement from the music scene. In the meantime ,Mssrs. Bowes & Morley released a 'soulful' pop album,seemingly just being tired of the whole 'big machine' of record deals,promotion et al. As fate would have it,they got so much fan response that they just couldn't stay disbanded!! Shooting At The Sun' is the awesome result of their reformed efforts in the studio! Arguably one of the band's best releases, this one has all the great trademarks of their best albums (for me,'Behind Closed Doors'& 'Laughing On Judgement Day').Any fan of classic British rock-Zep,Bad Co.,Whitesnake..Hell,you name it-would LOVE this band! don't let them be one of your 'undiscovered jems' any longer! Dive in and see just what you've been missing the last decade or so..ENJOY!"
Typical Thunder - no surprise!
L. B. Ivarsson | Rock City | 04/30/2003
(3 out of 5 stars)
"Thunder started out as a very promising hard rock band carrying on the British approach similar to Bad Company and Whitesnake. Their debut titled "Back street symphony" from 1990 was indeed very good. Thunder kept on recording albums in the same musical vein throughout the 1990's but decided to break up due to lack of success (lousy backup from the record company?) after the release of "Giving the game away" (1999). After a couple of solo projects (Luke Morley's "El gringo retro" 2001 and Bowes & Morley "Moving swiftly along" 2002) the guys decided to reform Thunder again.The musical core in Thunder has always been lead guitarist Luke Morley who write 99% of the material, and even 'tho Thunder have a very gifted singer by the name of Danny Bowes and a good song writer in Morley, I would prefer if the band had more variation in their music. On "Shooting at the sun", the musical direction is as it always have been, but in a way I believe that this album is not quite as good as "Back street symphony" or "Behind closed doors" from 1995 (their finest?). The songs are rather similar to one another and Bowes' voice sounds a bit strained more than occasionally. Don't get me wrong, this is a fine effort and songs like "Loser", "Everybody's laughing" and "Out of my head" are all very good but in the long run it all melts together in a slightly boring way. Thunder have always had a thing for (acoustic) ballads and a song like "A lover not a friend" is about as good as any other ballad by the band. My advise is that Morley get hold of a co-writer in order to create some variation between the songs, and that someone tell Bowes that he doesn't need to go at 125 mph all the time - sometimes less is more. In my opinion, this is clearly a very strong 3 star album worth having, but I can't agree that it is a masterpiece in any way."
Track Listings (13) - Disc #1
