In a year full of classic reunions, most people will gloss over the reforming of Extreme. We’ve been particularly spoiled this year, but I still have a soft spot in my heart for this bunch of rockers.

Nuno Bettencourt, as we all know, has bounced around the music scene, releasing solo efforts and forming moderately successful groups like Dramagods and Perry Farrell’s Satellite Party. Gary Cherone had a short-lived career as the frontman for Van Halen where he was resoundingly rejected by critics and fans alike. He seems to have been doing a fair bit of solo work over the intervening years too.

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Continuing my obsessive Exteme fanboy thing, I looked up Gary Cherone on MySpace this evening.

After Gary left Extreme, he joined Van Halen for a short while, although I think he joined the band at a bad time in their career and wasn’t particularly well received as frontman.

He’s done some solo recording, and been involved with his brother in a The Who tribute band. (He’s not the only rocker to do the cover tribute band thing – Joe Elliott from Def Leppard had a side project called Cybernauts)

Recently, Gary seems to be involved with a band called hurtsmile, a group which also features his brother Markus. I listened to a few of their tunes on MySpace, and it’s great to hear Gary’s distinctive voice again. It seems to be more straight rock than his solo material, I’ll be interested to see how they develop. I think it’s seriously early days for the band, because they don’t have any group shots, logos or identity yet.

Ah, the beauty of the Internet – looking up your teenage favourite bands and discovering they’re still making music!

I’ve written quite a bit about Extreme in the past – they were one of my favourite bands of the 90’s, and Nuno Bettencourt was my idol as a guitarist. I knew he was still performing, so I discovered his new band Dramagods and managed to get my hands on a copy of their album, Love.

It seems that the focal point of Dramagods is Nuno. But although he’s recognised as a guitar god, Nuno also fronts the group and he’s a surprisingly good vocalist. He carries off a range of material on this album, from hard-edged rock to more sensitive material.

Another surprising aspect of this album is that it isn’t filled with extended guitar solos. Instead, the guitar solos only appear where they’re suitable – they’re not the focus of the songs as I sometimes felt they were in Nuno’s earlier work.

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I must seem slightly fixated on Extreme: I’ve already reviewed their second and third albums on this blog. For the sake of completeness, this is my review of Extreme’s self-titled debut, released in 1989.

1989 at was the tail end of some major rock music releases, Def Leppard had released Hysteria, Bon Jovi’s New Jersey, Alice Cooper’s Trash and many other stadium-fillers had filled the rock charts. There was certainly a market for Extreme’s music, but in retrospect it may have got lost among the noise of the larger acts.

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