Lionville is a new, high profile project dedicated to pure AOR with a touch of West Coast and melodic rock with inspirations ranging from Toto, Richard Marx, Giant, Bad English and Survivor amongst many others too numerous to mention - not my words, Uber brothers and sisters, just the pride of Lionville.

A typical introduction brings in 'Here By My Side', a typical opening tune for this sort of melodic release, with a definite commercial attraction with hints of all of the aforementioned influences and plenty of others that again are too numerous to mention. The piano-possible Euro TV advert music like 'With You' and the Toto-esque 'Centre Of My Universe' have appeal but probably only to an American Orientated listening audience and the image of the artist isn't really strong enough to carry the songs further than the little corner of the market that these Italian gents are possibly overly happy to be encased within.

'Thunder In Your Heart' once again harps inspiration and influence instead of originality but still has its catchy and hooky moments nonetheless. 'The World Without Your Love' had me musing over which Dan Reed Network piece of balladry this was torn in large chunks from, a nice tune all the same. 'Power Of My Dreams', 'No End In Sight' and 'The Chosen Ones' follow, with the latter song containing some fine guest lead and backing vocals from Alyson Avenue front-lady Arabella Vitanc; they, unfortunately, all fall into that same category and aren't really worth me delving deeper into, although some of the vocal passages are decent with grand delivery from singer/project brainchild Stefano Lionetti....Lionville, Lionetti, Lionville; there we go, tied that one up.

'Over And Over Again' and 'Dreamhunter' conclude the musical business with the final track, acoustic tune 'Say Goodbye', at least showing some shred of purpose for the album...but all a little too late and with not enough ROAR from these Lions for my liking.........

www.lionville.it