It seems to me that the old AOR school is coming back, and it is coming from the Scandinavian countries that support melodic Rock for 30 years. WORK OF ART is another Swedish band with this love-hungry Rock mood. The band was created by Robert Sall and Herman Furin and - after many demos and rehearsals - we now have in our hands Artwork, their debut effort.

WORK OF ART is the kind of band that represents faithfully the AOR genre without a glimpse in the riffy Hard Rock scene. With the obvious influence of TOTO in their music, melodic to the bone and with lyrics about love, WORK OF ART give to the heartbreaking audience a heavy dose of '80s pop Rock.

Jokes aside, WORK OF ART know how to play this kind of music, but they are trying really hard to copy the sound of the original AOR bands like JOURNEY, FOREIGNER, SURVIVOR, CHICAGO etc.  These bands manage to create beautiful songs that communicated with a large number of loving people. Despite the fact that Artwork has easy-listening songs, like Why Do I? or Like No Other and many great songs, like Maria and (the TOTO-like) Camelia, the album cannot recreate the '80s feeling and attitude that I was expecting, even though Lars Safsund and Henning Axelsson are making a noble effort on the keyboards.

WORK OF ART are showing potentials that they can achieve many things in the near future. Their debut album marks what WORK OF ART is all about, their influences and guidelines. If you want to follow the AOR path of the future, take Artwork as a guide, the rest of us will still enjoy the pure and original JOURNEY 'pain'.