The world has an abiding love affair with the 80's, especially film and music. Personally, I lived through the decade once and though I certainly enjoyed those years, I don't need to keep revisiting them. LAST TEMPTATION is clearly counting on an audience with a different perspective. LAST TEMPATION is a European Hard Rock band that specializes in an 80's style of heavy music: Smooth, well-polished riffs; more harmony than discord; clean vocals and plenty of chants; socially minded lyrics. Very listenable for mainstream Hard Rock fans but you get the feeling that you have heard it all before.

"Fuel for My Soul" is the second studio album from LAST TEMPTATION. It spans 11 tracks and has a runtime of close to 50 minutes, which is at least 11 minutes too long as every song is about 60 seconds overextended. Just too much of the same thing. The riffs are catchy but lack a sense of passion; the lyrics come across as commonplace and preachy. There is some good stuff going on but it's too polished and too clean. Maybe they could dial back just one more decade to the 70's and go with less indulgence and more punch.

Listeners with a passable knowledge of Hard Rock will pick up on any number of similarities to notable 80's - 90's bands and songs. That era was just too big and too recent for people to forget. It's a bit of a paradox. On one hand, retro bands rely on a fanbase who loved an era gone by; on the other hand, it's almost impossible to sound distinctive when you are rehashing tropes that made an era so popular in the first place. I think 70's retro bands get away with it because they are replicating a sound that emerged before the age of mass commercial exploitation. "Fuel for My Soul" is good nostalgia for Hard Rock fans looking for a sound that once had its day. For extreme metal fans, a hard pass.