Review | Last Temptation – Heart Starter

Metalville Records

On their third album ‘Heart Starter’ French quartet Last Temptation claims to have refreshed their sound and musical approach. Started by guitarist Peter Scheithauer and drummer Fabio Alessandrini (who is also since 2016 active in one of Canada’s finest thrash bands Annihilator with Jeff Waters), after their second album ‘Fuel For My Soul’ (2022) the duo decided to change the line-up adding bass player Franz AO Wise and new vocalist Loup Malevil to the formation.

STRAIGHT FORWARD CLASSIC ROCK

On the ten songs that have made it to ‘Heart Starter’ the quartet produces straight forward classic hard rock with a big eighties American touch in the vein of Skid Row, XYZ or Bangalore Choir. Especially guitarist Scheithauer gets free range on this record. He is clearly the man who rules the roost with his big chops, riffs, and solos. And he does an impressive job I must say. That is very necessary anyway as singer Loup Malevil is certainly not as good as Sebastian Bach or Terry Ilous. His efforts are decent but his vocal melodies lack real imagination which sometimes hurts the songs. It is not that Last Temptation gets it wrong as songs such as ,,Wildfire’’ and ,,All In All Out’’ (with some subtle keys in the background) rock quite convincingly, but at the same time the mediocre singing by Malevil does not really help.

LAST TEMPTATION – THE CONCLUSION

Remember the pop song ,,Born To Be Alive’’, a hit by Frenchman Patrick Hernandez somewhere in 1979? I do (yes, I am an old fart, people). The 2024 version by Last Temptation is very beefed up compared to the original and is actually quite funny. That does not alter the fact that in order to really make an impact in the near future it might be necessary to change singers again. ‘Heart Starter’ is a decent classic rock disc but unfortunately not much more than that. It stands tall on the instrumental side of things but that is these days not enough to get noticed and/or recognized….

Release date: 12 November 2024