'Red, Hot & Heavy' marks the full debut for Denmark's 'Pretty Maids' following their self titled six track E.P released the previous year. Musically they find a niche somewhere between a raw European Metal sound combined with a slice of early American Hair Metal, the closest comparison I can think of would be Germany's 'Sinner' mid 80's era. Despite a few quirky moments this is nice piece of work, 'Ronnie Atkins' is a strong vocalist who thankfully has no appreciable accent, while the instrumentation and production are surprisingly impressive.

The album opens with the short but pretentiously titled intro 'Fortuna Imperatrix Mundi (Carmina Burana)' a fairly innocuous piece, which leads on nicely to the rugged rocker 'Back to Back', an energetic affair that's pretty uncompromising and highlights the first of many splendid solos for 'Ken Hammer'. The title track ensues in a similar vein but with a more gritty mid tempo stance, the chorus is always going to be a winner and it's well executed within the gang changed style. 'Waitin' for the Time' opens with a dated keyboard intro and although proceeds as a more melodic piece does have a certain edge which keeps it above the predictable and mundane. A needless spoken intro announces the following track 'Cold Killer' another mid tempo piece, which features an uneasy brooding approach, while highlighting a simplistic but effective chorus, sadly the mid-track tempo drop and spoken sound-bites weren't really necessary. The 'Dokkenesque' style rocker 'Battle of Pride' ensues and is a solid melodic rocker, 'Ken Hammer' and 'Pete Collins' turn in strong performances, while 'Ronnie Atkins' also doesn't disappoint. The momentum is picked up with the blazing 'Night Danger' a borderline Power Metal cut, which ebbs and flows with conviction, while 'A Place in the Night' also recalls 'Dokken', but ultimately feels a little too generic. Much better is the galloping yet melodic 'Queen of Dreams' which is a cleverly penned song, that at times is reminiscent of 'Rainbow' and 'Yngwie Malmsteen', the solos featured are sublime and all told is a very good song. Lastly we are gifted a cover of 'Thin Lizzy's' 'Little Darling' featuring guest 'Bill Cross' on lead guitar, personally I'm not that impressed by the original and this isn't really any improvement.

Despite the fact 'Red, Hot & Heavy' only clocks in at 36 minutes, it's an impressive but sadly overlooked debut and can't help feeling if it was released by an American band, they would have seen greater success.