DANGER WORLD

Even the replacement of Harald Bareth as lead singer with Andre Carswell could not by itself explain the dramatic shift in the sound of ANYONE'S DAUGHTER as they "reformed" around the year 2000 and released "Danger World". Rather, the material itself betrays a self conscious shift, to a more robust, modern rock more suited to the albeit far greater dynamics of Carswell's voice, with which I find little fault. Matthias Ulmer's keyboards, as in the original lineup, remain dominant and at times recall the original band's complexities, other than the two obvious cases when the band revisits classic songs.

While a few fine tracks emerge, specifically the enthusiastic ballads "Nina" and "I'll Never Walk that Road Again", the proggy "Helios" and the techno pop "No Return", we are also subject to some truly unredeemable material like "Good Gone Bad", "The Glory" and "Wheel of Fortune", which sound like anonymous modern rock with an above average keyboard player. The rest of the original material is mediocre, its lack of conviction magnified by the searing technique and soaring emotion of "Moria" and "Sundance of the Haute Provence", both originally appearing on their self titled second album from 1980. As a side note, I love to hear "sunbathing" correctly pronounced this time around.

From a prog perspective, there really is little to recommend here, and even from a pop or rock perspective, I'm not sold. If you must enter the dangerous world of 21st century ANYONE's DAUGHTER, I suggest doing so via the "Trio Tour" live CD, which includes the best material from this and the follow up disk "Wrong". That's assuming you have already caught up on their classics from the original incarnation.