EMPIRE: "Leeches" 5 
Perris Records 2004 
Review by Kimmo Toivonen, 
17 August 2004 
I can imagine that early eighties rock radio programming sounded a bit like this album. "Leeches" is a mixture of various influences and styles, mostly from the 70'ies or even 60'ies, with some eighties sounds added to spice it up. The album kicks off with the straight-forward title track that reminds me of Hanoi Rocks and the likes, although the keyboards are very much in the eighties vein and add a nice twist to the song. The next song "American Wet Dream" is somewhat in the same style, as is the ballad "Are You There For Love". 
After the rather decent opening trio of songs the band heads further into the seventies' world, with the virtually all of the remaining songs sounding like "classic rock" - one song sounds like The Beatles, the next sounds like The Sweet, the next like The Doobie Brothers...clearly not my cup of tea, since I'm not a big fan of that kind of very "classic rock". I did like "The Pressure", which sounded like a curious mixture of the 60'ies and the 80'ies.