Tempt - Runaway album review

Melodic rock has found its new heroes in New Yorkers Tempt

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Tempt Runaway album cover

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Imagine if you could combine early Van Halen swagger with the tunefulness of the first four Foreigner albums and the style of Pyromania-era Def Leppard. A pipedream? Meet Tempt, the youthful New York band who do exactly that on their hugely exciting debut album.

From the moment that Comin On To You reels you in, with the pliable vocal harmonies and lush yet edgy melody, this album holds the attention. Every song is a winner, with the pumping Under My Skin, the emotionally clambering Aamina and the perversely priapic Fucked Up Beautiful especially engaging.

The four all show an energetic musical expertise way ahead of their years, with guitarist Harrison Marcello coming up with some serious heroics that nod towards Eddie Van Halen and Richie Sambora, and vocalist Zach Allen has a style that is smooth yet also has a welcome prickliness. Runaway is joyous proof that AOR has been reborn.

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Malcolm Dome
Malcolm Dome

Malcolm Dome had an illustrious and celebrated career which stretched back to working for Record Mirror magazine in the late 70s and Metal Fury in the early 80s before joining Kerrang! at its launch in 1981. His first book, Encyclopedia Metallica, published in 1981, may have been the inspiration for the name of a certain band formed that same year. Dome is also credited with inventing the term "thrash metal" while writing about the Anthrax song Metal Thrashing Mad in 1984. With the launch of Classic Rock magazine in 1998 he became involved with that title, sister magazine Metal Hammer, and was a contributor to Prog magazine since its inception in 2009. He died in 2021.