A stereotypical 1980s revival. 

Founded in 1985, Swedish rock group Roulette released their album GO! on July 25th, their first album since 2019. This album attempts to showcase the band’s musical evolution throughout the years, highlighting how the group has pulled inspiration from Def Leppard and Van Halen to find their sound, while attempting to come up with their own individual sound.

The album opens up with “Answer to My Prayers,” a track that has a stereotypical 80s rock sound that integrates semi-angsty vocals with punchy drums and a guitar line that drives the track. However, the lyrics are rather superficial and lackluster. “Fire In Your Eyes” opens with a darker sound, but the overall instrumentation is lost due to an over-mixing of the vocals and the instruments, giving it a muddy tone. This muddy sound in the mixing continues for the whole album, making it hard to hear each individual instrument most of the time. “We Remember You” has a guitar riff that is a bit complex, but sounds like any other guitar riff that came out of the 80s. It is very hard to hear the bass on this album, but when it is present, the tone can be described as sounding like a bullfrog, which does not help with the muddy mixing of the album. “Strangers” sounds like the last few tracks, and lead singer Thomas Lundgren is a tad bit too old to be attempting to sing with the amount of swagger he is going for. “What Are We Looking For” contains a bit of synth, but it disappears quickly, leaving listeners wanting more. “Take Me As I Am” tries to mix a bright sound on the chorus with an edgy sound on the verses. Unfortunately, the tonal transitions between the two are really hard to follow, overall making the track confusing to listen to. “Brand New Start” has slightly encouraging lyrics and sounds reminiscent of Journey, but Roulette really doesn’t hit the mark with the Journey sound. The slow bridge of this track makes it lose momentum and drive. “Don’t Be Sorry” has a guitar line intro that has a lot of flair, but the bass tone is still muddy. “She Can’t Hide” brings the synths back into play, but they get lost in the mix of the other instruments after a bit. The last track “Better Walk Away” sounds very similar to the rest of the album but concludes with an odd chord that doesn’t fit well, giving the album a confusing ending. 

GO! attempts to accomplish a lot with its vocals, instruments and mixing, but ends up doing the opposite. Every track sounds the same and with the exception of the synth, nothing incredibly groundbreaking or interesting happens. While Roulette seems to know what they are doing, they stayed inside a box of the 1980s rock scene sound, giving themselves no space to experiment. Overall, the album could have done a lot more, but stays quite reserved.