With a work ethic that makes 80s Def Leppard look diligent, Extreme have, by their own admission, been working on Six since around 2015. Admittedly, Rhianna has been keeping guitarist Nuno Bettencourt busy in her live band, but the rest of them might have been drywalling for all I know.
It’s not clear which songs from those initial sessions have made it onto Six, but apart from the occasional slip – Mask, Beautiful Girls – this is a showboating and triumphant return.
It's less funk out, more crunching, brightly produced hard rock, matched with some very cleverly arranged vocal parts, that veers between pop and metal but never sounds misplaced.
They rattle – the excellent X Out, the Velvet Revolver-like Banshee – and hum on tracks like the delicate Hurricane and the classic pop-ballad twist of Other Side Of The Rainbow. Don’t leave it so long next time
