First of all I have a huge respect for Magnus Karlsson. He has in my opinion done a lot of great things for the hard rock/melodic metal scene over the last ten years. Especially the three “Last Tribe” albums, are all good and catchy melodic metal, not groundbreaking in any sense, but very well delivered. Also his work with Jorn Lande and Russel Allen is worth mentioning.

With Starbreaker Karlsson teams up with Tony Harnell (TNT, Westworld, Morning Wood) as co-songwriter. 'Loves Dying Wish' is the bands second effort and overall they deliver some good chorus-driven hard rock songs.

Production wise the album is top-notch, the sound is crystal clear with Tony Harnells voice up in front, his voice suits the style very well, he really sings his lungs out, and often sounds very passionate (just listen to “Hide”), he is unquestionable one of the highlights here. Music wise there’s a lot of well written riffs (“Evaporate” and “Unknown Superstar”) and also occasionally some very good soloing. My main problem with most of the songs are the fact, that they all have suffer from the same structure: a calm keyboard/acoustic intro, followed by a solid riff, then Harnell starts singing and its all very nice, until a multilayered chorus “comes to save the day”, which is repeated 5 times with a solo break in between, perhaps I seem a bit unfair and generalizing, and off course each song has more to give, but overall the album is very repetitive. All the choruses have a “pop-like” commercial feeling to them, which I’m not really fond of, very MTV-friendly and the word “sell-out” crossed my mind many several listening to this album.

But overall this is good melodic metal/hard rock, done by very talented musicians; my problem is the song writing, which seems uninspired and formulaic. I miss some originality and some courage to try something new. For me the album seems too easy for such talented musicians, but if you’re into chorus driven hard rock/melodic metal and you don’t mind lack of originality or “selling out”, then try it out.