1. Where Are You Now
2. Insecure
3. Vagabond
4. Calling Past
5. Annoying Delight
6. Nightshow
7. Midnight Striker
8. Dream Connection
9. Indication

The Norwegian band Wild Side started out in late 2005, formed by drummer Ronny Arntzen and ex-Pagan's Mind guitarist Thorstein Aaby.

To complete the line-up, vocalist Paul Martin and bass player Johnny Myren were hired.

Myren did not stay in the band for long, and in came a much more competent bassist, Stian Stensrud.

In the begining the band was mainly playing cover tunes, but a couple of original tracks also surfaced.

Early 2007 a two-track demo featuring "Nite Show" and "Calling Past" was recorded. Shortly thereafter Aaby's health got worse, so the band decided to get a stand-in guitarist. Tom Grana, an old friend of Stensrud joined the ranks. This worked out really well, so the plan was to go for a twin guitar attack when Aaby got back.

Unfortunally, that never happened, because on July 24th 2007, Thorstein Aaby died of cancer.

In November of 2007 the band entered Ronny Le Tekrö's (TNT's legendary guitarist) Studio Studio to record their debut album, Indication. But some problems followed, and the album wasn't released until October of 2008, then only in Scandinavia.

Enter 2009 and things looked promising for the band: Wild Side recruited a second guitarist, the highly skilled youngster Jon Aarseth, adding an extra dimension to both studio and live preformances of the band. But shortly after, singer Paul Martin decided to quit due to personal reasons.

This debut here won’t gain much attention though:

The first song “Where Are You Now” is a song you’ve heard a thousand times before. Nothing special at all, in fact it just goes nowhere. The guitar sound is crappy and sounds like it could have come from Ratt’s Invasion Of Your Privacy from 1986. The vocalist seems like he’s totally uninterested in doing the record and stays like that all the way through. The worst thing about this record though, is the unbelievably bad lyrics.

The second song has potential for a while with a great opening riff but the endless galloping becomes just tiring.

However, the guitar solo is great! TNT singer Tony Mills is credited for backing vocals on this album and you can hear that from the very interesting vocal harmonies he makes, they sound much like those he came up with on his latest solo effort.

On track five, did the drummer listen to Kingdom Come’s “Get It On” before doing the intro for this one?

Track number seven is a classic 80s Metal tune with cool guitar riffing. But again you get stuck on the terrible lyrics.

The rest of the album is good melodic/hard rock but not excellent... This debut could have been so much better!

I would recommend this debut album only to the die hard fans!!

The follow up 2010 release "Speed Devil" (review also on this website) will show Wild Side's true power.