Street Legal is a new band from Norway and “Bite the Bullet” is their 2^nd studio album, after 2000’s “Thunderdome”. It has been 8 years between their debut and their second album, several line-up changes occurred in the meantime, yet “Bite the Bullet” is here to stay.

The fact that we have a band, that in the year 2009 is ‘moving’ musically in late 70’s hard rock paths, mostly influenced by Thin Lizzy and early Whitesnake, it is the first remarkable thing about this band. Street Legal’s style though is not limited in the above but it is enriched with other, more modern elements that anyone can see in the album.

Now, the album itself…Strong “old school” hard rock riffs, good guitar solos, nice voice, nice songs, BUT…there is a ‘but’: the album has power, melodies, it is interesting as far as the performances, but the compositions and the inspiration lying beneath are not the ones to make the album something more than just interesting.  I know that the friends of the genre will probably disagree, but I just didn’t find something more than 3-4 great tracks even though I listened to it over and over and over again. These 3-4 highlights are: the Thin Lizzy influenced "Unconditional Love", the “Silent Tear”, the blues rock ballad “Shadow In My Heart” and “Trapped”, while a cover of Michael Sembello’s “Maniac” is very remarkable as well.

The album unfortunately has nothing more that I could talk about, so I will only shorten this article by saying that it has its good moments, which at times become very good, but it is so far away from what I would describe as a great record. This is my point of view, and I really don’t mean that the album is bad. Your musical ‘needs’ however are the ones to define what you are going to see in this album, my needs are just way more as far as 70’s hard rock/classic rock…

I suggest that you listen to it anyway, especially 70’s hard rock fans…who knows, maybe you see in it what I couldn’t see…