In the year of 1985, the Swedish guitar player TOMMY DENANDER  released an album called Cut In Ice that nobody ever heard of and no other albums would follow. Then, as the years went by, this young metal head became a great music producer working with big names such as MICHAEL JACKSON , PETER FRAMPTON and DEEP PURPLE to name a few. After a very successful career as a producer, TOMMY DENANDER decided to go back in time and revisit his only "solo" work from almost 40 years ago. After some remixing and re-recording of some parts, he decided to re-release his first and only album with the name Cut In Ice-Revisited. Despite the new production, you can notice that the output is very close to the California rock from the 80’s as you can hear on the album title song “Cut In Ice”.

The bands that come to mind are RATT and MOTLEY CRUE. Not very complicated riffs with a lot of guitar chug chugs and simple melody like in  “I’m Alive” shows a band in its infancy still. One of the characteristics from the bands of that era is the good guitar solos and it seems we have plenty of good ones on this album. “Reach Out” is next and is a little more energetic than the previous 2 with another crazy guitar solo ala Eddie Van Halen. One thing that I remember from the hairy heavy metal from the 80’s is that the guitar parts are usually the highlights. Bands like VAN HALEN and DOKKEN where the star is not the singer, but it is the guitar player and they will remind you of this in every song. The singer on this album is H. Spider Söder and despite doing a good job, his voice is not powerful enough to take the shine away from the guitars.

"Above The Clouds" is an example of that. Guitar arrangements are in the forefront and they are quite good on this tune particularly, but the vocals are kind of weak. We continue with the 80’s rock vibe with “Hard To Believe” that uses the same formula and the singing melodies are not very catchy on this one. Once again, the star of the tune is the guitar. I am taking in consideration that this album was composed in 1985 and it matches the vibe of the era perfectly, however, despite the good quality of the new production, it still sounds dated. We reach the one that I consider the best of the album so far “It's Alright” despite having heard the guitar riff in a hundred other albums. We have also to take into consideration that this is the first album of a young kid and his band. This kid decided (wisely) that it would be better to produce other bands and artists instead of trying to create the next big thing in rock. The band could go on to have great success but this album so far does not have that magic that a great band would have in their first release.

Another basic guitar riff mixed with amazing guitar solos can be found in “Bursting Out” , which is another good tune despite the repetitive chorus. We reach the end of our journey to the past with “Nobody’s Heroes” that for me took the best of the album title. A better thought arrangement and a little dash of personality allowing the tune to sound different from the bands of the era. In resume, a good 80’s rock first release with a lot of influence by the California Bay area hairy rock and a weak singer unfortunately. I believe this album was released more to please the accomplished producer that also is an amazing guitar player, than to be commercially successful.