_{“Now” is the third album from Italian band Planethard, but the first to feature new vocalist Davide Merletto. Sometimes the first thirty seconds or so of the first track on an album can give you a fairly good feel for what you can expect from the rest of the album. On “Now”, the opening track “Play Harder” certainly captured my attention and it proved to be a good indicator for the remaining tracks. As I tend to only have time to skip through albums that are sent into the station before deciding if I want to download them, that ability to grab my attention makes all the difference! “Now” was released through Scarlet Records on 13th October. Check out the track “Play Harder” on the Friday NI Rocks Show first broadcast on 17th October.}

_{The press release from Scarlet Records refers to Planethard’s “powerful melodic rock sound”. In my humble opinion though, the majority of the tracks on “Now” would certainly fall into the heavier end of the “melodic rock” genre. In addition to Merletto, the band members are Marco D'Andrea on guitars, Alex Furia om bass guitar and Stefano Arrigoni on drums. Guitarist D’Andrea also co-produced the album alongside Matteo Magni at Magnitude Studios. The latter also mixed and mastered the album.}

_{Find out more at https://www.facebook.com/planethard}

_{About “NI Rocks Recommends”}

_{The simple idea behind “NI Rocks Recommends” is to acknowledge and promote some of the great music being submitted to Rock Radio NI. To be honest I’m not really a big fan of “Reviews” expressing positives or negatives which essentially just represent one person’s opinion. With “NI Rocks Recommends”, I'll not be giving marks or ratings or dissecting every aspect of the album; just telling you something about the artist and the album and that I like it!}

_{My musical tastes covers most things from heavy melodic rock (anything too melodic bores me!) to the lower echelons of the metal genre (where it’s not ALL growling and screaming!). The albums that I’ll be recommending are merely those that I would buy myself and which you’ll be hearing played on my shows on Rock Radio NI.}

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