AOR or Album Orientated Rock is in a way similar to Melodic Rock as both are genres that utilize melodic elements, adding in a more softer calmer touch to heavy music if you will. There is a difference though as one can also be heavy and wild as well as soft and melodic and one is solely focused on the more calmer cheerful side of the music. Take a guess which is which? Yep you guessed it. The former is Melodic Rock and the latter is AOR. I mostly have a strong love for the former but I do enjoy a bit of the latter and today I will be reviewing the debut album from a new AOR supergroup comprising of three big name musicians from three big name AOR bands/projects and their name is CWF/Champlin, Williams, Friestedt.

Formed in 2012 after a sold out Scandinavian tour, this new supergroup consists of three names from some pretty big bands in the AOR business including Bill Champlin of CHICAGO, Joseph Williams of TOTO and Peter Friestedt of L.A. PROJECT. Together these three musicians all came together to create and craft some brand new AOR numbers.

During the process, a myriad of additional musicians and special guests came into to assist them on the songs including Bill's wife and son Tamara and Will Champlin, Lars Safsund (WORK OF ART), Alessandro Del Vecchio (HARDLINE), Johan Granstrom (HEJ KALLE), Ingemar Aberg (CAROLA), Per Lindvall (ABBA), Steve Porcaro (TOTO), Herman Matthews (Michael Bolton) and many more.

Together, this supergroup comprising of a wide variety of musicians all poured their time and ideas into writing new original AOR material and the resulting album "CWF" is the first release from this new AOR supergroup so now I will review it and see if I can continue to love AOR just as much as my love affair with Melodic Rock.

Clocking in at around 40 minutes, the new album from this AOR supergroup opens up with two amazing songs of music perfection; "Runaway" and "Aria" and these songs alone give you a taster of what this album is about as each is crafted with some beautifully crafted melodies that leave you excited and intrigued as to what the rest of the album has to offer.

The remainder of this albums songs continues to display even more masterful songwriting with special nods going to songs such as "Two Hearts At War" which is a masterfully written AOR number filled with some truly breathtaking melodies and "Nightfly" which is a very jazzy number complete with saxophones and trumpets adding in a sense of unique creativity. More honorable mentions include "Rivers Of Fear" which is an acappella style number complete with a backing choir and no music whatsoever making this a different yet uniquely awesome song and "All That I Want" which is a beautiful and relaxing song.

The performances on this album are super tight and the mixing is excellent, allowing the listeners to enjoy and appreciate all the work that went into this masterful record. This is all thanks to the main musicians involved and the myriad of special guests joining in to jam with them on the songs who each all bring their own skills, experience and talent to the music. There really is absolutely no fault I can find with this album at all so in short, it's a pure masterpiece.

Bottom line, the debut album from CWF is a masterful AOR album chock full of amazing melodies, excellent songwriting, a great selection of musicians and lots of memorable songs. Highly recommended if you know of any of the works of the members involved or if you like brilliantly crafted AOR music.

Performance - 10