Review Summary: What Danger Danger do here, Bon Jovi and Survivor had already done better years previously.
It's surprising that Danger Danger ever achieved any degree of success. The band released their debut album in 1989, at a time when the face of radio-friendly pop-rock was slowly beginning to shift, and even then their sound was five to ten years too late.
With "Danger Danger", the band inserts itself in the same bracket as Survivor, Rick Derringer or very early Bon Jovi. Their radio-friendly, completely mainstream pop-masquerading-as-rock sounds like an unabashed, all-out assault on the airwaves.
The band's main asset lies in their singer, Ted Poley, who has a pleasant and clearly very gifted voice. The remaining instrumentalists play it straight, but apart from the overbearing keyboards, no-one ever particularly shines. The guitar is very subdued and just "kinda there" - even the solos never particularly pop out from the overall sound. The drumming is exceedingly mechanic, and the poor bass player needn't even have bothered, because the production chops him off completely.
As for the songs, they sound like a mixture between Survivor and the more vibrantly cheesy moments of a Sunset Strip band. There isn't a weak track on here, but none are particularly strong either, apart from lead single
Naughty Naughty and absolute highlight
Under The Gun, by far the best song on the album, and a track which shares some similarities with Bon Jovi's first hit
Runaway. The rest are pleasant enough, and their choruses try their damnedest, but the explicit commerciality of it all eventually becomes grating; by the end of the album, you'll be tired of the band's poppy, keyboard-laden overtones. The glammier tracks fare better than the poppier ones, if only because glam rock is irresistible 95% of the time, regardless of how commercial it is; however, the problem still remains - Danger Danger could make
Europe look like a black metal band.
In short, this album is slightly above-average, and slides pleasantly by; however, if you're looking for really good 80's rock, you'd better look elsewhere. Apart from the band's strange fixation with repeating words twice (aside from the name itself, two tracks are called Naughty Naughty and Bang Bang) there is nothing innovative or noteworthy here. What Danger Danger do here, Bon Jovi and Survivor had already done better years previously. Which leads me back to my original question: how come this group managed to make it!?
Recommended Tracks
Naughty Naughty
Under the Gun
Don't Walk Away
Bang Bang
