Artist: Vixen
Title: “Vixen” (remaster)
Label: EMI Records
Release Date: 11/2/2004
Genre: Hard Rock
Rating: 6/10

The all-female “Hard Rock” group Vixen was a nice little combination while it lasted. The premise was simply to have 5 beautiful women who all loved Heavy Metal music and put them together. The results were a number of catchy tunes as all of the ladies in the band could play and were not just eye candy for the Male viewer/listener. This was during the big-hair eighties when MTV ruled and it seemed like this domination would never see an end. Vixen featured the members of Jan Kuehnemund (lead guitar), Share Pedersen (bass), Janet Gardner (vocals and guitar), and Roxy Petrucci (drums) and from this record received a very heavy rotation with the song “Edge Of A Broken Heart”. It was a catchy number and of course the girls were all sexy so this made for the tunes success. I think however the overall appeal of the band by playing “safe” Hard Rock began to seem contrived or cliché and against bands like Whitesnake or Dokken who shared the same audiences the band was not destined for long term activity. If anything I feel the band might have sparked the musical dreams of female listeners in the sense of this proved that success could happen in the seemingly male-dominated genre. The group recently was a featured artist on the VH1 series “Bands Reunited” and this appearance led to the re-release of the 2 CDs that the group recorded. For the pure nostalgia aspect it is worth it to once again enjoy the group and some of its tunes. Yet this release made me wish that EMI had opted to release artists from that time who provided a larger and more profound impact on music than Vixen gave us. This was a nice release but beyond that it is for a select amount of people and nothing more. A booklet with lyrics from the album is included as well as some photos. Purely for the Vixen fans wanting the replace the vinyl or music archivists.
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