Realized Fantasies

Realized Fantasies combines TNT’s vivid guitar phrasing, translucent keyboards and Tony Harnell’s high vocals, and became the close of the first period with Harnell in the band. Ronni Le Tekrø’s guitar is technical yet always mindful of the riffs and melody that push the songs forward, and a band unity breathes throughout. On “Downhill Racer,” “Hard to Say Goodbye,” “Lionheart” and “Indian Summer,” pop hooks and hard-rock sharpness intersect, and both lightness and tension coexist. A lyrical song like “Rain” also shows the band’s high melodic sense. Even amid the musical changes of the early 1990s, TNT held firmly to its own refined style. Rendering the advanced musicianship of Nordic melodic rock into accessible songs, it is an accomplished record that caps the golden era.