Category Archives: Influenced

Classic Songs to Be Discovered, Influenced, Music, My Stories

Top 10 of 2025: The Albums That Broke Through the Static

1. Machine Head – UNATØNED (USA)

I’ll admit it up front: there’s bias here. I’m a Machine Head lifer. I’ve sweated through their Sydney shows, screamed the choruses with a room full of strangers who felt like brothers, and I’ve bought the albums twice, CD for the shelf, vinyl for the ritual. This band has scored entire eras of my life, so yeah, I walked into “UNATØNED” expecting to feel something.

Machine Head has always lived on the knife’s edge between reinvention and self-sabotage, and “UNATØNED” is the sound of a band embracing that duality with both hands, refusing to sand down the jagged edges. This is metal that screams at the mirror. Metal that questions its own reflection.

And I like it.

What hits hardest here isn’t the brutality, it’s the volatility. The feeling that the wheels might come off at any second, but somehow the chaos is the direction. Robb Flynn’s voice has never sounded more torn between rage and clarity, between tearing things down and trying one last time to build something that matters.

It’s the band wrestling with genre expectations, with the legacy they built and the scene that keeps trying to define them. Every riff feels like an argument with their past. Every breakdown is a refusal to accept complacency. And in that tension, in that refusal, Machine Head taps into something feral and real.

Metal isn’t supposed to be safe. This album remembers that.

Stand Out Tracks: “Outsider”, “Not Long For This World”, “Bonescraper”, “Bleeding Me Dry”, “Shards Of Shattered Dreams”, “Scorn”

2. The Night Flight Orchestra – Give Us The Moon (Sweden)

I was there on this tour, same as I was a few years back when they rolled through. And yeah, I did the VIP thing. Met them. Shook the hands that wrote the soundtrack to so many late-night drives and long-haul headspaces. I’ve been locked in since the debut dropped in 2012, and I haven’t looked back once.

Maybe that’s why Give Us The Moon hits the way it does. It’s not just another record, it’s another chapter in a story I’ve been following for over a decade. TNFO have always existed in their own cinematic universe, part AOR nostalgia, part neon-lit fantasy, part heart-on-sleeve sincerity. But this one feels like a culmination: tight, melodic, polished without losing the humanity. It’s the sound of a band who know exactly who they are and exactly what they’re doing

But “Give Us The Moon” carries a different weight. It’s the first album without Dave Andersson, founding member, core songwriter, a pillar of the band’s DNA. You can feel the absence, not as a void, but as a presence. The songs shimmer with that bittersweet afterglow you get when a band pushes forward because stopping isn’t an option.

And yet the record still soars.

There’s joy in these songs, but also yearning. The sense that we once believed in things bigger than us, and maybe still could.

Every chorus feels like the high point of the night. Every verse feels like the road leading there. And whether you lived through the era or discovered it through YouTube artifacts, “Give Us The Moon” hits with the same truth:

We’re all searching for the magic we lost… and sometimes, the only way forward is back through the stars.

Standout Tracks: “Like The Beating Of The Heart”, “Melbourne May I”, “Runaways”, “Give Us The Moon”

3. Landfall – Wide Open Sky (Brazil)

Landfall were one of those Frontiers discoveries that didn’t just slip onto my radar, they punched through it. Their 2020 debut, “The Turning Point”, arrived in the middle of lockdown chaos and felt like a flare in the dark: bright, melodic, unapologetically AOR, the kind of record that made you remember why hooks and heart still matter.

I was in from that moment.

Then “Elevate” hit in 2022 and confirmed it, they weren’t a one-off spark, they were a band worth following, worth investing in, worth waiting for.

And now we’re here.

There’s nothing more rebellious in today’s overproduced, hyper-calculated landscape than sincerity. “Wide Open Sky” understands that perfectly. Landfall isn’t trying to shock you. They’re trying to reach you.

This album lives in that sweet emotional bandwidth between familiarity and freshness, a place most bands try to fake and fail. Landfall hits it because they’re honest about who they are: a melodic hard rock band that refuses to apologize for loving melody, heart, and clean, powerful hooks.

There’s courage in restraint. There’s confidence in not overreaching.

And there’s beauty in doing the simple things extremely well.

Three albums in, they sound like a band refining their craft with each step, stripping away the fat, sharpening the hooks, tightening the storytelling. These aren’t songs that reinvent the wheel. They’re songs that remind you why wheels matter: movement, momentum, connection.

Standout Tracks: “Tree Of Life”, “SOS”, “Running In Circles”, “No Tomorrow”, “Higher Than The Moon”

4. Teramaze – The Harmony Machine (Australia)

Teramaze hit my life out of nowhere in 2020 with “I Wonder”, and it stopped me cold. One of those rare albums where every track is a keeper, no skips, no filler, just a band firing on every cylinder with clarity and intent. That was the moment they locked in for me.

Teramaze has always been one of those bands operating just outside the prog mainstream, too thoughtful for the “riff Olympics,” too heavy for the art-rock crowd. “The Harmony Machine” is the record that embraces that outsider identity fully.

This album is intricate without bragging about it. Heavy without shouting it. Emotional without melodrama.

Where most prog bands treat songwriting as a riddle to be solved, Teramaze uses complexity as a storytelling device. The twists serve the journey, not the guitarist’s ego. And you feel it: tension, doubt, revelation, collapse, rebuilding… all woven into the architecture of the songs.

There’s darkness here, but it’s purposeful.

There’s light, but it’s earned.

Call it progressive metal for people who care more about narrative than notation. It’s heavy music with a novelist’s sense of pacing, a rare and necessary mutation in a genre that often confuses density with depth.

Standout Tracks: “Like A Cyborg”, “Sinister”, “Perfect World”, “Desire Colours N Lust”, “Black Sound”, “The Harmony Machine”

5. Sisters Doll – Scars (Australia)

I found them this year through “Scars”, and that was it. One listen and you realise this band isn’t operating in the same frequency as the rest of Australia’s rock scene.

Because here’s the thing: Sisters Doll isn’t just a band; it’s four brothers raised on a steady drip-feed of KISS, Budgie, Firehouse, Mötley, Van Halen, Magnum, Aerosmith, Alice Cooper, the whole electricity-soaked DNA of 70s and 80s hard rock. When your dad has KISS posters on the walls and riffs pumping through the house before you even know your times tables, it rewires you. You grow up thinking this is what music is supposed to feel like: oversized, unapologetic, melodically dangerous.

And their name?

Pure lightning-in-a-moment creativity. The brothers at a computer, flicking through classic logos. Twisted Sister… New York Dolls… and then someone blurted out “Sisters Doll.” No corporate brainstorming session. No branding consultant. Just instinct, exactly how rock bands should be named.

That’s what hit me when “Scars”landed. The immediacy. The honesty. The sense that these four brothers aren’t trying to revive something, they genuinely are the continuation of that lineage. They carry the attitude in their blood. The hooks are polished, but the energy is raw.

Sisters Doll might be Australia’s best-kept secret right now, but secrets like this don’t stay hidden for long.

“Scars” takes every element, big choruses, shiny melodies, theatrical moments, and turns them into something raw and exposed. This isn’t glam for glam’s sake. This is glam dragged through lived experience, glam hardened and cracked in the right places.

The biggest surprise?

The vulnerability hits harder than the riffs.

The hooks are undeniable, but it’s the honesty that sticks. They’re not resurrecting the past. They’re weaponizing it. And the result is an album that earns every one of its emotional punches.

Standout Tracks: “Climbing Out Of Hell”, “Prisoner”, “Change”, “Kiss Me”

Plus they do a cool cover of “God Gave Rock N Roll To You”, released as a single in 2023.

6. Days of Jupiter – The World Was Never Enough (Sweden)

Days of Jupiter came into my world at exactly the moment I needed them.

Disturbed went on hiatus, and suddenly that gap, the groove-heavy, anthemic, modern-metal fix, was wide open.

That’s when “Secrets Brought to Life” hit me in 2012. It wasn’t an imitation; it was a different branch of the same evolutionary tree. Same muscular riff language, same emotional voltage, but with a Scandinavian coldness woven through the melody. It scratched the itch and created a new one at the same time.

Then came the run of albums that cemented it:

“Only Ashes Remain” (2015), the band at their most sharpened and dramatic, leaning into the fire.

“New Awakening” (2017), a title that felt prophetic, because this is where they stretched the edges.

“Panoptical” (2018), their tightest, most conceptually aware work, a panoramic scan of everything they’d become.

And then… silence.

The kind of disappearance that feels permanent in this genre, where momentum is everything.

But somehow, they’ve resurrected themselves.

“The World Was Never Enough” isn’t just a comeback record, it’s the shockwave after an unexpected return.

I didn’t expect them to return. That’s what makes this era exciting.
This feels less like “another album” and more like unfinished business finding its way back to daylight.

Massive soundscapes often swallow the message. Not here.

The vocals soar, the guitars punch, the rhythm section feels like tectonic plates grinding. But instead of collapsing under all that weight, the songs expand, breathe, and build.

This band understands contrast.

That power means nothing without space.

That melody means nothing without pressure.

What emerges is a record that feels like a fight and a release… a catharsis wrapped in polished production. It’s metal engineered for scale, but powered by emotion.

Standout Tracks: “The World Was Never Enough”, “The Fix”, “Parazite”, “Invincible”

7. Jimmy Barnes – Defiant (Australia)

What can I even say about Jimmy Barnes?

I’m a full-blown fanboy and have been for as long as I can remember. The Cold Chisel era lit the fuse, those songs were stitched into the fabric of this country long before I ever understood why they mattered.

Then the solo records hit, and each one felt like a chapter in a life lived louder, harder, and more honestly than most of us dare to imagine. Even his foray into soul, the books, the memoirs, the cookbooks, if Barnes put his name on it, I absorbed it.

He’s one of Australia’s most iconic voices, a force of nature wrapped in grit and heart, and no matter how wide the legacy stretches, he’ll always be our working-class man.

That’s the framework I carry into “Defiant”, not objectivity, not distance, but decades of connection, admiration, and a deep sense that his roar has been part of the soundtrack of my own life.

Barnes has been singing for decades like the world is trying to take something from him and he refuses to let it go. “Defiant” is the sound of that refusal reaching its final, volcanic form.

There are albums that preserve legacy. This one burns it into steel.

Every track feels earned, the rasp, the roar, the cracks that most singers would try to fix. Barnes doesn’t fix them. He weaponizes them. The grit tells the story long before the lyrics do. You can hear the years, the miles, the survival.

Working-class rock isn’t a genre. It’s a biography.

And this album is another chapter in a life built on refusing to die quietly.

Standout Tracks: “That’s What You Do For Love”, “Never Stop Loving You”, “Beyond The River Bend”, “New Day”, “Defiant”, “The Long Road”

8. WET – Apex (Sweden/USA)

W.E.T. is one of those rare Frontiers projects that didn’t just work, it over-delivered. On paper it looked like another label-engineered collaboration, the kind that burns bright for one album and quietly disappears. But when you put Robert Säll from Work of Art, Erik Mårtensson from Eclipse, and Jeff Scott Soto from Talisman in the same creative orbit, something different happened. The chemistry wasn’t theoretical, it was audible.

Their blend of melodic hard rock, arena-sized hooks, and polished contemporary rock hit me immediately when the debut landed in 2009. What was supposed to be a one-off turned into a proper band with multiple studio albums and even a live release, something almost unheard of for these “assembled” projects.

And that’s why they stuck with me.

There’s a moment every few years when a melodic rock record lands that feels like a line in the sand. “Apex” is exactly that.

WET didn’t chase trends. The production is meticulous, but the emotion bleeds through untouched. The choruses feel designed for stadiums, but the lyrics read like private confessions. It’s the rare fusion of precision and humanity, a record that rewards both technical analysis and emotional surrender.

Put simply: this is melodic rock done at the highest possible level.

A reminder of what the genre can be when ambition and heart align.

Standout Tracks: “Believer”, “Love Conquers All”, “Where Are The Heroes Now”, “Stay Alive”, “Day By Day”

9. Babylon AD – When the World Stops (USA)

When Babylon A.D.’s debut dropped at the end of the ’80s, I genuinely thought they were going to explode. They had the swagger, the hooks, the imagery, you could slot them right beside Crüe, Jovi, or Skid Row and it made perfect sense. I was ready for them to be one of those bands, the ones who went from the clubs to the arenas in a single breath. But it never quite happened.

The second album arrived, made a ripple, and vanished quicker than it deserved to. Then Seattle hit, and like a lot of bands from that era, Babylon A.D. slipped into the fog. For years it was radio silence. If you weren’t on MTV, the world forgot you existed.

Then Napster came along and, legalities aside, it resurrected whole corners of my musical DNA. Suddenly people were trading deep cuts, forgotten albums, and long-lost bands.

Babylon A.D. reappeared in the wild, passed around like a secret handshake. It didn’t make them chart-toppers, but it made them relevant again. It reminded me why I’d believed in them in the first place: there was real fire in those early songs, a spark worth rediscovering.

It’s a band that survived the cracks of an era and found its way back into the conversation.

“When the World Stops” is not a nostalgia trip. It’s a reckoning.

The riffs feel lived-in, the grooves carry weight, the lyrics sound like they’re written by people who’ve survived things rather than imagined them. There’s hunger here, but also honesty, the kind you can’t fake. It’s a rough-edged record, intentionally so, and that’s exactly why it works.

In an era obsessed with polish, Babylon AD rediscover the power of imperfection.

Standout Tracks: “When The World Stops”, “Torn”, “The Damage Is Done”

10. H.E.A.T – Welcome To The Future (Sweden)

What can I say about H.E.A.T?

They’re one of those Swedish bands that arrived exactly when I needed them, filling a void I didn’t even realise had gotten so wide. Melodic heavy rock had gone missing from my life, at least in the way I wanted it: big choruses, sharp hooks, bright production, and that sense of forward momentum only the best Scandinavian acts seem to bottle.

I first heard “Address the Nation” in 2012, and it hit with the force of a reminder. Oh right, this is what this music is supposed to feel like.

From there I immediately went backwards, digging into the first two albums, discovering the foundation they’d already laid. And once you’re in, you’re in. I’ve been following them ever since, album to album, lineup to lineup, watching them refine that hybrid of AOR sheen and hard-rock muscle into something unmistakably theirs.

H.E.A.T. made melodic heavy rock feel alive again. And every new release since has been another reason to stay plugged in.

But “Welcome To The Future” is the first time it feels like they’ve truly broken the gravitational pull of their own past.

This album is wired with urgency. You can feel the momentum in every chorus, the forward push in every riff. They’re not reinventing themselves, they’re evolving.

The guitars burn neon. The whole record feels like a mission statement:

Rock isn’t dead. It just needs believers.

And H.E.A.T sound like the last true evangelists.

Standout Tracks: “Running To You”, “Disaster”, “In Disguise”, “The End”

My Final Thoughts

I went into 2025 not knowing what the hell I even wanted to hear anymore. Burnout crept in from every angle, too many albums, too much algorithmic sameness, too much noise masquerading as discovery. My ears felt tired. My brain felt full. But I’m a lifer, and lifers don’t quit, we recalibrate. So I went back to the beginning. The stuff that built me. The records that knew my moods before I could name them. And once those old foundations were steady again, I opened the door to the new. Some records blindsided me. Some left me cold. Some whispered, “stick around… we’re not done yet.”

And that’s the point. These ten albums aren’t trophies, they’re the map of a year spent listening with intention. A reminder that perfection is a fairy tale, but impact is real. Music still has the ability to shock us, disappoint us, challenge us, and rewire our circuitry for an hour at a time. Even the albums that didn’t quite land took a swing, and that swing matters. Because the real story isn’t the ranking—it’s the pursuit. The restlessness. The search for something that hits deeper than expectation. That’s why we listen. That’s why we never stop.

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Classic Songs to Be Discovered, Influenced, Music, My Stories

The What-If List: 2025’s Albums That Could’ve Been Top 10 on a Different Day

Harem Scarem – Chasing Euphoria (Canada)

If “The Pirate Bay” didn’t exist, I’m not sure I ever would’ve stumbled into Harem Scarem. The band name alone wasn’t exactly screaming “essential listening”, if anything, it sounded like something I’d skip past without a second thought. And I cannot recall seeing any of their albums for sale in the record stores I would visit.

And that’s the lesson I should’ve known by then: never judge a record by the packaging, especially in rock.

Because the second those opening chords and that razor-sharp guitar lick kicked in on “Hard to Love,” everything changed.

I was in.

Completely.

I couldn’t believe it had taken me nearly sixteen years from the debut’s release to finally hear what everyone else apparently already knew.

Pete Lesperance isn’t just good, he’s one of those players who should’ve been plastered all over every guitar magazine I grew up devouring. Fluid, melodic, precise, emotional. A guitar god hiding in plain sight.

Finding Harem Scarem that late felt like discovering a lost chapter of a book I thought I already knew. And I’ve been making up for lost time ever since.

They have always lived in that strange creative space where consistency becomes both blessing and curse. Too good to ignore, too reliable to shock. “Chasing Euphoria” leans into that identity and refuses to apologize for it.

This is a band that knows exactly what they’re chasing: melody delivered with precision, hooks built to last, musicianship that whispers instead of screams. And in a world where everyone’s trying to reinvent the wheel to get fifteen seconds of algorithmic relevance, there’s something refreshingly rebellious about a band choosing refinement over reinvention.

This is the kind of record critics never scream about…
…but fans play for years.

Standout Tracks (plus great guitar moments): “Chasing Euphoria”, “Better The Devil You Know”, “Slow Burn”, “Gotta Keep Your Head Up”, “Reliving History”, “A Falling Knife”

Wildness – Avenger (Sweden)

Wildness pulled me in before I even heard a note. It was the cover art of their 2020 album “Ultimate Demise”, that neon-drenched, retro-revenant aesthetic straight out of “The Wraith”.

And if you know “The Wraith”, you know why that matters: a cult ’80s fever dream with Charlie Sheen coming back from the dead to settle the score, backed by one of the most criminally underrated hard rock soundtracks of the era. That visual language alone told me exactly what world Wildness were operating in.

And once I pressed play, that was it. I was locked in. I started tracing backwards to their 2017 debut and forwards to everything they released after, watching the evolution, catching the nuance, waiting to see where they’d go next.

It’s safe to say they’ve got me now, committed, invested, watching every move.

Another Frontiers act, yes, but one that doesn’t get lost in the label’s vast catalogue. Wildness stand out because they know exactly how to blend nostalgia with muscle, image with substance. They hooked me with a cover, but they kept me with the music.

“Avenger” is melodic hard rock turned up to its maximum expression: massive hooks, skyscraper choruses, guitars that sparkle and snarl in equal measure.

But the crucial thing is intent. Anyone can imitate the 80s. Wildness believes in the 80s. They channel it like a power source, not a costume. There’s zero irony, zero distance. They’re not leaning on nostalgia, they’re fueling it, igniting it, weaponizing it.

This album demands that you let yourself feel something again in a world that keeps telling you to stay numb.

If you want rock that apologizes for its size, go elsewhere.

If you want rock that reminds you why you fell in love with it in the first place, start here.

Standout Tracks: “Wings Of Fire”, “Crucified”, “Broken Heart”, “Avenger”, “Stand Your Ground”, “Eye Of The Storm”, “Walk Through The Fire”

Tokyo Blade – Time Is The Fire (UK)

I’ll admit it, I came into Tokyo Blade completely cold. The name floated around my periphery for years, one of those bands you keep meaning to check out but never quite get around to.

This time, I finally pressed play, and I’m glad I did. Because “Time Is The Fire” hit me with a feeling I hadn’t tapped into for ages, that pure, unfiltered heavy metal nostalgia.

The kind that takes you straight back to dropping the needle on a Maiden or Saxon album, leaning back while the opening riffs roar to life, staring at the cover art like it’s a doorway into another world, and reading the lyrics line by line as if you’re decoding a map. Tokyo Blade gave me that feeling again. That spark. That reminder of why this genre grabbed me in the first place.

Sometimes coming in cold is the best way to rediscover the heat.

There’s a kind of honesty you only get from bands that outlast fashion. They are still swinging, still bleeding for the cause, still carrying the NWOBHM banner long after the world stopped looking in their direction.

“Time Is The Fire” isn’t perfect, and that’s exactly its charm.

The twin guitars? Still lethal.

The grit? Still real.

The need to prove something? Somehow still burning.

Standout Tracks: Every single track

Nighthawk – Six Three O (Denmark)

Nighthawk entered my world through Björn Strid, because when that man lends his voice to a project, I pay attention. Simple as that.

One listen and it was clear this wasn’t just another side-gig or nostalgia exercise. This was a band tapping straight into the veins of ’70s blues-rock grit and ’80s hard-rock swagger, the exact blend that’s basically engineered to short-circuit my resistance.

It’s the kind of sound that feels lived-in, road-tested, shaped by the ghosts of all the music that raised us. And with Strid at the helm, delivering vocals that cut through the mix with precision and soul, it became impossible not to lean in deeper.

Nighthawk didn’t sneak in, they walked through the front door carrying everything I already love. How could I not be on board?

Nighthawk understands something too many bands forget: intensity isn’t about speed or volume—it’s about intention. Six Three O is the most deliberate punch you’ll take all year.

There’s no fat. No filler. No “maybe we should try this experimental middle-eight.” The band writes like they’re chiseling granite: clean lines, sharp edges, no compromise. And in that discipline, the whole record breathes.

The songs hit with muscle, but they stick because of the craftsmanship. Every chorus lands. Every riff feels earned. There’s a sense of purpose here, a seriousness of execution that elevates what could’ve been mere nostalgia into something alive, something forward-moving.

Call it a love letter to melodic hard rock’s golden age.

But it’s written in fresh ink.

Laguna – The Ghost Of Katrina (Mexico)

Every once in a while, a debut shows up that’s less a calling card and more a manifesto. Laguna’s “The Ghost Of Katrina” is exactly that, an atmospheric, shadowed, deeply melodic vision of what the next era of melodic rock could be.

This album doesn’t scream. It haunts. It lingers at the edge of the room. It waits for you to lean in.

There’s nostalgia here, yes, but it’s tempered by melancholy, by restraint, by a sense of unspoken stories beneath the surface. The melodies sweep, the guitars shimmer, but the emotion is cloudy, unsettled, the perfect kind of tension.

It’s a debut that respects the past without being chained to it.

Ronnie Romero – Backbone (Chile/Spain)

Romero has spent years being the voice for other people’s visions. Finally, here he is, unfiltered, unmasked, unrestrained. Backbone is a title that borders on understatement.

This is his musical identity without the safety net. Big riffs, towering vocals, moments where he leans back into classic metal tradition and others where he barrels forward into something sharper, more modern, more feral.

There’s no hedging here. No trying to please everyone.

Just a singer with something to say, saying it at full volume.

You get the sense that this isn’t just an album, it’s a declaration.

A reminder that he’s not here to be hired. He’s here to lead.

The Southern River Band – Easier Said Than Done (Australia)

There’s reckless joy and then there’s lived-in swagger. Southern River Band choose the latter, and “Easier Said Than Done” is the sound of a band embracing their scars with a grin and a shot of whiskey.

Nothing here feels polished.

Nothing feels safe. And thank god.

This is rock that sweats. Rock that stumbles. Rock that gets back up because the riff demands it. You can hear the late-night gigs in the guitar tone, the worn boots in the bassline, the grit under the singer’s nails. There’s authenticity here that you can’t buy and most bands can’t fake.

It’s messy in the places that matter.
Perfect in the places that count.

Catalano – Nightfighter (Australia)

Catalano walks in wearing glam’s old leather jacket, but the energy is entirely modern: sharp, urgent, unapologetically loud. Nightfighter is a love letter to excess delivered with a fighter’s instinct.

The riffs shred. The vocals swagger. The production gleams like neon bouncing off chrome. But underneath all that bravado is a tightness, a discipline, a sense of knowing exactly when to strike.

This isn’t retro worship, it’s resurrection. Not imitation, acceleration.

If glam metal ever needed a new champion for the modern era, this album throws down the gauntlet.

Creeper – Sanguivore II: Mistress Of Death (UK)

Creeper have always walked the line between drama and danger. “Sanguivore II” doesn’t walk, it sprints, capes flying, teeth bared. But what saves it from camp is conviction.

This band treats theatricality like a weapon. Not parody. Not cosplay. A delivery system for emotion, venom, and narrative. The hooks glisten like stolen jewels. The lyrics bite. The atmosphere feels like a haunted opera house lit by broken neon.

Most bands attempt this kind of thing and collapse under the weight of their own ambition. Creeper thrives in it.

They don’t tip into absurdity because they never wink.

They mean every second. And that sincerity makes the darkness glow.

These albums sit in that fascinating space between “great” and “essential.” On any other day, hell, on any other mood swing, half of them could’ve muscled their way straight into the Top 10.

They’re the records that shape-shift with you: heavier when you need weight, brighter when you need escape, sharper when you need clarity. Some pushed boundaries. Some perfected familiar formulas. Some simply refused to fade into the background.

Together, they form the shadow-constellation around the main list—a reminder that music isn’t a fixed hierarchy but a living, shifting thing. These aren’t leftovers; they’re contenders, circling the throne, waiting for the right moment, the right listener, the right late-night spark to take the crown.

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Classic Songs to Be Discovered, Derivative Works, Influenced, Music, My Stories

Albums That Tried to Fly Higher in 2025 and Still Might

Let’s kick off the end-of-year rundown with the albums we all circled on the calendar, the ones we expected to split the sky wide open. They landed, they’re solid, but they didn’t quite sling me into that astral orbit Ozzy hit the moment he launched into “Over the Mountain.” Not yet, anyway.

And that’s the thing: not yet is the keyword here. Decades of listening have taught me that records I initially filed under pretty good often grow teeth, soul, and permanence with time. Music is a long game. Context matters.

Where you are in life matters.

Your mood matters.

The hours you carve out for real, undistracted listening matter.

Even the simple ritual of buying the record, holding it, cracking it open, letting the artwork seep into you, creates a connection that streaming never will.

So these albums might not have lifted me off the ground this year, but that doesn’t mean they won’t catch a thermal down the line and carry me somewhere I didn’t expect. That’s the beauty of listening: the records stay the same, but we don’t.

And sometimes“expected more” is just another way of saying, “we still believe you’ve got greatness in you.”

Dream Theater — Parasomnia (USA)

I’ve got the “Parasomnia” graphic novel landing in January or February, tickets locked for the Sydney show, mid-summer, the sweet spot, and the entire “Quarantième: Live à Paris” arsenal on its way: vinyl, CD, Blu-ray, the full ritual package.

Because when a band hits you at the exact right moment, it brands itself into your timeline.

For me, it was the Australian summer of ’92 going into ’93. “Pull Me Under” came through the speakers and that was it, no hesitation, no slow burn. I went all in. Built a cathedral out of riffs and odd time signatures. My name ended up in the fan-funded first edition of “Lifting Shadows”, Rich Wilson’s biography. A tiny line in a thick book, but it felt like a stamp in a passport to another world.

And decades later, nothing’s changed. I’m still a first-day buyer. Still hitting preorder like it’s muscle memory.

So when I talk about end-of-year lists and expectations and albums that didn’t quite hit escape velocity?

Dream Theater sits outside that framework entirely.

They don’t compete.

They just arrive.

But this time around, they are here. In this list.

Portnoy’s comeback was supposed to be a seismic event. And in flashes, it is.

The drumming feels unshackled again, elastic, mischievous, a little dangerous. Not as robotic. It drags the band into thrilling asymmetry, reminding you how paranoid and alive they used to sound.

But “Parasomnia” is also the sound of five musicians renegotiating gravity.

The interplay is extraordinary in isolated passages, keyboard spirals that feel like lucid-dream glitches, Petrucci lines that cut like tungsten wire, Myung’s bass grumbling in the basement like the subconscious trying to surface. The problem? It never fully resolves into a thesis.

The album aims for the labyrinthine but often settles for the technically inevitable.

There’s brilliance in the corners, moments where the band feels like they’re discovering oxygen again, but the overarching architecture wavers. As if the band knows what they’re capable of but is too aware of the weight of its own past.

“Night Terrors” is Dream Theater doing what only they can do, classic, confident, instantly recognisable.

It’s their version of “The Force Awakens”: the familiar returned, polished, tightened, welcomed with open arms because it remembers what made you fall in love in the first place.

“A Broken Man” does exactly what the title hints at. It’s chaos in song form, fractured, jagged, unsettled, but that’s the point. It feels like watching a mind splinter and reassemble in real time.

But the real revelation is “Bend The Clock.” This is where they swerve into pop-rock territory without surrendering a single strand of their progressive DNA. It’s melodic without being soft, intricate without being indulgent. It sits in that magical space between “Images and Words” and “Metropolis Pt. 2”, the era when they were discovering how far they could stretch melody without losing muscle.

It’s the song that shouldn’t work, yet somehow works better than everything around it.

Finally, “The Shadow Man” feels like an intentional glance over the shoulder, threads of their past woven straight into the present. Little callbacks, little winks, especially to “Metropolis Pt. 2”.

Not imitation, not nostalgia for its own sake, but echoes. Fragments. Signals for the listeners who’ve walked the whole journey with them.

Ghost — Skeletá (Sweden)

Ghost’s strength has always been mythmaking: cathedral pop coated in metallic lacquer.

“Skeletá” tries to dismantle that mythology. It replaces spectacle with confession, shadow-play with bare lighting. And the shift is courageous, Tobias Forge leans into vulnerability with melodies that float instead of march.

The production is the most skeletal (pun intended) the band has ever embraced, airier arrangements, fewer layers, more emotional oxygen.

But the truth is… Ghost’s emotional palette is still evolving. The introspective songs tremble with intention, but some of them lack the gravitational force of their grander works. It’s as though Tobias exposed his emotions and then wasn’t sure how far to go.

There’s a moment in “Peacefield” where everything clicks, and you don’t even know why. You’re humming along, lost in that syrupy Ghost atmosphere, when the chorus rises up and suddenly you’re twelve again, staring at the ceiling, waiting for the world to make sense.

And it never does, but music sometimes gets close.

That lift, that melodic climb, isn’t random. It’s a shadow of one of the most immortal hooks in rock history: the chorus architecture of Journey’s “Separate Ways.”

Not the notes. Not the phrasing. The geometry.

The emotional staircase.

Ghost didn’t steal the melody; they stole the feeling of inevitability. That upward lunge that says here it comes, that quiet promise that something bigger is right around the corner. Journey nailed it for the MTV generation. Ghost resurrected it for a world that spends more time doomscrolling than dreaming.

This is Tobias Forge at his sly, cathedral-rock best. The man understands nostalgia the way a chess grandmaster understands sacrifice: you don’t go for the queen, you take the pawn that exposes the whole board. He threads the spirit of an arena classic into a modern occult rock hymn and makes it feel like it always belonged there.

The past isn’t something you repeat. It’s something you compost.

Break it down, pull out the nutrients, grow something new from the rot of yesterday’s brilliance.

That’s Ghost. They don’t do retro; they do recombinant DNA. They turn AOR’s heroic optimism inside-out and build a darker, more cinematic version that still fills the lungs. “Peacefield” is what happens when you choose to honor the architecture instead of the wallpaper.

And the crazy part? Most people never notice.

They just feel it.

And, this is how music is supposed to feel.

Crazy Lixx — Thrill of the Bite (Sweden)

Crazy Lixx have never pretended to be philosophers, they’re the neon under the streetlights, the lipstick smear on the mirror, the chorus that hits like cheap perfume and bad decisions.

And “Thrill of the Bite” nails that… in theory.

The opening tracks roar with swagger, chrome-plated riffs, big-room snares, gang vocals like a bar fight in harmony. It’s indulgent, infectious, hedonistic.

Start with “Who Said Rock And Roll Is Dead.”

On the surface, it’s all swagger and sunlight, the kind of melodic strut that makes you want to roll the windows down even if you’re parked in your driveway.

But underneath?

There’s a harder lesson stitched into the chords: you find your real strength when the world doubts you the most.

Then the needle hits “Call Of The Wild,” and I am transported, suddenly I am back in that era when guitar intros were battle standards, not polite invitations.

The pulse echoes the frantic edge of a certain classic from the old guard, the kind that gallops more than it walks. “Back In The Village” comes to mind.

It’s not imitation. It’s continuity.

And then there’s “Recipe For Revolution.”

It’s the rare breed that marries muscle and melody without compromising either.

Here’s the inconvenient truth:

Rock didn’t vanish. The spotlight did.

And that’s what this band represents.

The idea that you don’t need to reinvent the wheel; you just need to keep it spinning long enough for people to remember why it mattered.

But halfway through the album, the sugar-rush becomes predictable.

You start hearing the formula:

anthem → pre-chorus lift → high-gloss chorus → two-step solo.

Regardless, Rock and Roll never died.

It simply waited for musicians stubborn enough, hungry enough, to prove that some fires burn brighter when everything around them goes dark.

Volbeat — God Of Angels Trust (Denmark)

Volbeat hit a strange point in their career, successful enough to have a signature, but boxed in by that same signature.

“God Of Angels Trust” is that tension laid bare.

The album is muscular and melodic in classic Volbeat fashion: sharp staccato riffs, rockabilly undertones, Michael Poulsen’s unmistakable baritone. But rather than reinvent, the band refines, and not always to their advantage.

There are moments where the old hunger tears through:

Tracks where the riffs feel serrated, the chorus detonates on impact, and Poulsen sounds like he’s exorcising demons rather than fronting them. But the album also cycles through familiar rhythmic patterns and predictable melodic arcs.

You can feel two creative instincts wrestling:

The desire to evolve, and the fear of losing the audience.

That tension produces a solid album, professional, powerful, but not the evolutionary leap the band hinted at.

It’s a strong record that hits hard, but too often in familiar ways.

Coheed and Cambria — The Father Of Make Believe (USA)

Coheed’s strength is in constructing universes, cathedral-sized concept arcs, operatic vocal lines, and prog structures folded like origami.

“The Father Of Make Believe” embraces that identity wholeheartedly.

The albumscape is full of layered guitars, ascending melodic leaps, and time signatures that fold back onto themselves like double-helix storytelling. The problem isn’t execution, it’s predictability.

You’ve heard this version of Coheed before. Maybe not these exact songs, but this exact shape.

It feels like the band is protecting their mythos rather than challenging it.

The choruses soar, but you anticipated the exact height.

The narrative threads tie together, but you can trace the stitching from miles away.

There’s joy in hearing masters at work, but the thrill of discovery, so central to Coheed’s best moments, is muted here. Fans will feast, but the album doesn’t expand the canon in the way its title promises.

A solid, expertly crafted chapter, but not the universe-shaking installment it hints at.

Stand out tracks are “The Father Of Make Believe”, “One Last Miracle” and “The Continuum”.

And then Coheed and Cambria reissued the album and they expanded the universe.

The “New Entities Edition” feels less like a deluxe package and more like a door cracking open to reveal the machinery of The Keywork still humming behind the walls.

What this edition does so well is deepen the idea that the Keywork isn’t a symbol, it’s an ecosystem. A cosmic lattice powered by the entities living inside it, each one acting like a living conduit proving that its energy isn’t mystical so much as engineered.

It’s not just another version of the album.

It’s another chapter.

Bonfire — Higher Ground (Germany)

The Bonfire that lit the fuse for me isn’t the Bonfire onstage today. Lineups shift, decades move, and the chemistry that once defined a band becomes something more like a memory than a current. Hans Ziller stands as the last original flame, the lone architect holding the blueprint while the rest of the crew has turned to history.

And yet.

I still look forward to every new release.

What keeps me coming back isn’t nostalgia. It’s the fascination of watching a legacy evolve in real time. The name stays the same, the spirit mutates, and every album becomes another chapter in a story that refuses to end just because the cast has changed. In a way, that’s its own kind of resilience, proof that sometimes the fire keeps burning simply because someone refuses to let it go out.

Bonfire are lifers, blue-collar craftsmen of European hard rock.

Their instincts are impeccable: guitar tones dialled with precision, vocal harmonies that arc cleanly, choruses designed to land on the first listen.

“Higher Ground” is exactly that: competent, energetic, polished.

But the album rarely veers from the expected pathways. There’s a comforting reliability to it, but also a ceiling.

The production is clean but safe. The performances are strong but rarely transcendent. You keep waiting for the moment the band takes a risk, swings wide, or throws you a melodic curveball, but the album opts for stability.

And there’s nothing wrong with that.

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We Sacrificed Our Lives for Rock and Roll (Jake E. Lee Edition)

Jake E. Lee should’ve been a household name.

He wrote the riffs that kept Ozzy Osbourne relevant in the mid-’80s, carved lightning out of mahogany, and made the guitar sing like a wounded animal trying to escape the zoo. Then he was gone.

Fired.

Forgotten.

No explanation. No headlines. Just silence.

And yet, he never stopped playing.
Because the lifers never do.

We came from that generation that thought music could save us. We weren’t trying to become content creators, we were trying to become gods. The Beatles had turned black-and-white lives into Technicolor, and by the time Sabbath, Zeppelin and Van Halen hit, we wanted to plug in and join the revolution.

Our parents told us to get degrees. We bought Marshalls instead.
They told us to settle down. We chose distortion.

Back then, the sound wasn’t an accessory, it was oxygen. Every riff was a rebellion, every rehearsal a prayer. We learned how to solder cables before we learned how to pay bills. We thought tone could change the world.

Jake understood that.

He was too good for compromise, too strange for the machine. When he left the limelight, everyone thought he’d vanished, but he’d just retreated to the desert, still playing, still writing, still chasing the ghost of the perfect note.

After Ozzy, Jake E. Lee should have ruled the world. He formed Badlands, and for a moment, it felt like redemption.

It wasn’t corporate. It wasn’t polished. It was alive, beautiful, human.

Ray Gillen could sing like the gods were tearing open the sky. Jake’s tone was molten iron, all feel, no filter. They had the songs, the chemistry, the hunger.

And then it imploded. Not because of drugs, or label politics, or creative differences, although they did have disagreements which carried over into the live show, but because real life crashed the party.

Those albums will never be reissued on CD. The reasons are complicated, contested, and not mine to litigate, but the silence around them is deliberate.

Atlantic Records buried the catalog. The albums vanished from stores, from streaming, from history. A digital scar where greatness once lived.

And that’s the ruinous truth about rock and roll: it’s not built to last. It’s built to burn.

For every band that becomes immortal, a hundred vanish not because they weren’t good enough, but because they flew too close to something human, desire, tragedy, ego, love, disease.

We talk about “legacy” like it’s something we can engineer. But the universe doesn’t care how good your solo is. There are no guarantees. No justice. No moral equilibrium that balances out the riffs.

Sometimes the guy who gave his life to the craft ends up selling insurance. Sometimes the band that could’ve changed everything gets wiped from the archives because life doesn’t want to play fair.

But maybe that’s the point.

Maybe rock and roll was never about permanence, maybe it was about risk. The willingness to live without a safety net. The courage to make something beautiful in a world that erases beauty every day.

Jake E. Lee is still out there, still playing, still alive, still searching for a sound no one can algorithmically predict. Badlands may be gone, but that’s what makes them holy. You can’t stream them, you can only remember them, or, if you were lucky enough, you can feel the ghost of their frequencies vibrating somewhere under your ribs. Like YouTube. Which has basically the history of music on its side.

So yeah, the world forgot. The label buried the tapes. But the lifers remember. Because some of us didn’t just listen to the music. We were the music.

We didn’t lose the dream.
We lived it, scars, silence, and all.

Meanwhile, the world changed.
MTV collapsed. Algorithms replaced A&R men. Guitar solos went out of fashion. The kids traded fretboards for touchscreens. And the rest of us, the ones who built our lives around the volume knob, we watched the dream shrink until it fit in a playlist.

But here’s the thing: the fire never dies.

A few solo albums here and there and Jake came back decades later with Red Dragon Cartel, not to reclaim a throne, but to prove the riff still mattered. It wasn’t nostalgia; it was a declaration of faith. Every note said, I’m still here. I never stopped believing in the noise.

And that’s us too, the forgotten believers. We rent apartments instead of owning homes. We have tinnitus instead of retirement plans. We can’t remember passwords, but we can tell you the exact pickup configuration Randy Rhoads used on “Crazy Train.”

We’re not failures. We’re pilgrims who never found the promised land but kept walking anyway.

When Jake bends a note, it’s not just music, it’s defiance. It’s the sound of every dreamer who refused to clock in, every musician who still hauls a 4×12 cab into a bar for gas money and applause from thirty people who actually listen.

We sacrificed our lives for rock and roll. And if you have to ask why, you’ll never understand.

Because the show, that fleeting, electric communion between the amp and the crowd, that was the home we were looking for all along.
And when the lights go down and the first chord hits, everything that never worked out suddenly makes sense.

We didn’t miss out on life. We lived it louder.

The tragedy of Badlands isn’t ancient history, it’s prophecy. Every artist today lives on the same knife’s edge. One bad headline, one algorithmic shadow-ban, one rumor whispered into the right inbox, and you’re erased. Your catalog disappears, your legacy gets rewritten by people who never even heard your work. We don’t burn on stage anymore; we burn in silence, beneath the scroll.

But here’s what separates the lifers from the tourists: the lifers keep playing.

They know the system’s rigged. They know the world rewards the shallow and forgets the sincere. And they do it anyway.

Because somewhere inside the noise, the heartbreak, the lost royalties, there’s still that kid who picked up a guitar and thought sound could save the world.

That’s who Jake E. Lee still is. That’s who we are. We keep writing riffs in an era that doesn’t believe in permanence, because the truth was never meant to be preserved, only felt.

In a digital wasteland of content and convenience, the act of creation itself is rebellion.

And rebellion, like rock and roll, doesn’t die, it just goes underground and waits for the faithful to find it again.

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Who Really Wrote Wind of Change?

Rock history is built on myths. Some of them we know are true, Keith Richards falling out of a palm tree, Ozzy biting the bat, Axl showing up three hours late. Some of them are stitched together later, when journalists and fans try to impose meaning on chaos. And then there’s “Wind of Change”.

On paper, it’s simple: Klaus Meine, the Scorpions’ frontman, comes back from Moscow in ’89 with the smell of revolution in his lungs, fiddles around with a keyboard, and whistles the melody that would soundtrack the fall of an empire. No co-writer, no Svengali, just a German kid who grew up in a divided country, watching the wall finally crack. That’s the official story.

But then Patrick Radden Keefe drops his podcast “Wind of Change” in 2020, floating the idea that maybe, just maybe, this wasn’t a German ballad of hope at all, but a CIA psy-op slipped into the bloodstream of Soviet youth. A cultural Trojan horse disguised as a rock anthem.

The idea is ludicrous on one level, Klaus laughs when it’s put to him. But here’s the thing about conspiracy theories: they’re fun. And sometimes they stick not because they’re true, but because they feel like they could be.

Think about it.

The Cold War wasn’t just nukes and spies in trench coats. It was MTV, Levi’s jeans, smuggled cassette tapes. You couldn’t outgun the Soviet Union, but you could out-dream them. You could sell them freedom in four minutes and forty-two seconds, wrapped in a whistle and a chorus about brothers in Gorky Park.

So what if a CIA lyricist did have a hand? A guy in Langley, chain-smoking in his cubicle, listening to Bon Jovi, scribbling lines about the Moskva River because he knew soft power beats steel tanks? The romantic in us kind of wants it to be true. It makes the song bigger than the Scorpions. It makes it history, not just music.

But here’s the rub: songs don’t last because of conspiracies. They last because they resonate. You can orchestrate propaganda, but you can’t fake goosebumps. Whether Klaus wrote every word or some nameless spook polished the lines, it doesn’t matter. What matters is that when the Soviet Union cracked open, there was a soundtrack. And it wasn’t Beethoven or state-approved anthems, it was a German hard rock band singing about change.

And isn’t that the real subversion? That the most enduring act of the Cold War wasn’t an assassination, or a coup, or a summit, it was a whistle that every Russian kid could hum?

You want to know who wrote “Wind of Change”?

We all did. The fans circling the Scorpions’ cars in Leningrad. The soldiers in Moscow turning from guard duty to join the chorus. The kids who bootlegged the cassette until the tape wore thin. Whether or not Langley had a hand in it, the truth is simpler, scarier, and more beautiful: a song toppled an empire because people believed it could.

The Guardian Article

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Ace Frehley: The Solos in the Shadows

I got into Kiss in the ’80s, but the poster on my wall was from the Destroyer era, four painted faces staring down from a cosmic skyline. Courtesy of my older brothers.

The songs I blasted, “Lick It Up,” “I Love It Loud,” “Tears Are Falling,” “Crazy Nights,” “Heaven’s On Fire,” “War Machine,” “I Still Love You,” “Creatures of the Night,” and my two obsessions, “Exciter” and “I’ve Had Enough”, didn’t feature Ace Frehley. But in my head, he was there. The Spaceman. Because that’s who I saw every morning when I woke up.

Now he’s gone.

Seventy-four years old. A fall. A brain bleed.

Just like that, the Spaceman fell back to Earth.

It’s an ending that feels both absurd and poetic. A man who claimed to be from another planet, who made his Les Paul sound like a supernova, taken down by gravity, the most human force of all.

Kiss fans and casual listeners know the iconic solos, “Love Gun”, “Black Diamond”, “Deuce” and “Parasite”.

Those solos burn. They’re anthemic, unmistakable, tattooed across rock history.

But this week, I pressed play on “Calling Dr. Love” and “Makin’ Love” from “Rock and Roll Over”.

And there it was. That tone. That feel.

You can’t copy it. You can’t dial it in.

That slightly behind-the-beat phrasing, that lazy drag, that human imperfection that somehow makes the whole band sound tighter.

“Calling Dr. Love”

The solo doesn’t rush in. It waits.
That tiny pause before he hits the first note, it’s everything. The inhale before the punchline.

When it lands, it doesn’t boast; it speaks.

Ace builds the solo like a conversation with the riff, a bend that teases, a double stop that grins, a tone that growls like an idling Harley. There’s humor in it. Swagger. Humanity.

That’s the secret: Ace could make the guitar sound alive.

“Makin’ Love”

Buried near the end of the album, it’s almost an afterthought in the catalog. But play it now, loud, and you’ll hear Ace at full confidence.

The riff is heavy, chugging, primal.
Then the solo rips in, a sharp exhale of defiance. But again, it’s not speed. It’s phrasing. Every line feels deliberate, like he’s carving the air.

He slides between melody and menace, blues phrasing inside a rock cage. The bends ache. The sustain hums. There’s sex in it, sure, but also frustration, humor, and that same smirk he wore behind the makeup.

It’s one of those solos you don’t analyze, you feel. And when it’s over, you hit repeat, not to learn it, but to understand it.

We talk about “tone chasing” like it’s a gear problem, pickups, tubes, pedals, wood. Ace proved it’s a personality problem.

Your tone is your truth.

Your personality. Your attitude. You can’t fake it.

Go back now. Start with “Calling Dr. Love”. Listen like it’s the first time.
Then put on “Makin’ Love”.

Listen closer.

Find the moments where he wasn’t trying to prove anything. That’s where the soul is. That’s where the magic hides.

Ace Frehley didn’t invent rock guitar. He humanized it.

He made it fun again. Dangerous again. Imperfect again. He made every fourteen-year-old kid believe they could plug in and matter.

That’s the legacy. Not the makeup. Not the pyrotechnics.

It’s that moment when your fingers hit the strings and you realize: you don’t need to sound perfect, you just need to sound like yourself.

Ace did.

Every single time.

And now, somewhere out there, the Spaceman keeps playing, still behind the beat, still in tune with the universe.

P.S.
While this piece has a Kiss edge, Ace’s solo career deserves its own orbit.

Start with “Rip It Out” from his 1978 solo album, the definition of controlled chaos.

Then jump to “Into the Night” from Frehley’s Comet (1987). Written by Russ Ballard, yes, but Ace owns it, that melodic, bluesy solo lifts the whole track skyward.

Different decade, same truth: Ace’s guitar didn’t imitate emotion. It was emotion.

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Nothing’s Original, and That’s the Point

Every riff you’ve ever thrown horns to is a hand-me-down. Every chorus you’ve ever screamed at the top of your lungs is somebody else’s ghost wearing new leather. That’s the dirty little truth of rock and metal: it’s all borrowed, stolen, ripped apart, and reborn louder than before.

Music isn’t original. It’s immortal.

Take Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young’s “Carry On.” Gorgeous harmonies, that golden California glow, but underneath?

It’s Davey Graham’s “Anji.” No shame in it.

Zeppelin? They cannibalized Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, and Willie Dixon so hard they got dragged into court and still became gods.

Metallica built half of “Kill ’Em All” on riffs they lifted straight from Diamond Head. Nirvana took The Pixies’ soft-loud blueprint and weaponized it into a grunge anthem.

The “Burn” riff in G minor wasn’t just a Deep Purple opener, it was an embryo. Ritchie Blackmore lit it, Coverdale and Hughes sang it into history, and Glenn Hughes carried it forward like DNA in his bloodstream.

You can hear its shadow in Hughes/Thrall’s “I Got Your Number” (1982), sharpened in Gary Moore’s “Run for Cover” (1985), and reborn in John Norum’s “Face the Truth” (1992). Same pulse, shifted into F♯ minor, but undeniably the same bloodline.

Coverdale didn’t leave it buried either. With John Sykes, he bastardized the Burn riff into “Children of the Night” on Whitesnake’s 1987 juggernaut.

Sykes doubled down a year later, repurposing the same DNA into “Black Hearted Woman” with Blue Murder. Different bands, different contexts, but still the same riff in a new disguise.

What we’re looking at here isn’t plagiarism, it’s a dynasty. A single riff spawning offspring across decades, mutating as it jumped from band to band. Hughes carried it soulful and elastic. Coverdale and Sykes weaponized it for arenas. Each branch different, but every branch unmistakably part of the same tree.

This is how it works. It’s always how it’s worked.

We’ve been spoon-fed the myth of originality, the idea that every classic song is lightning in a bottle. But peel back the layers and you see the skeleton:

Deep Purple’s “Smoke on the Water”? Just a blues riff flattened and played like a war march.

KISS made a career Frankensteining Chuck Berry’s DNA into glam rock fireworks.

Motörhead was Little Richard played through a chainsaw, Lemmy spitting gasoline on the mic.

Mötley Crüe swiped Sweet’s glam strut and Aerosmith’s sleaze, turned it into Sunset Strip debauchery.

Whitesnake borrowed Zeppelin’s swagger wholesale and polished it for MTV.

Kingdom Come? They didn’t even pretend, just straight-up cloned Zeppelin and dared you to complain.

And it goes deeper.

Black Sabbath slowed down the blues until it sounded like an earthquake.

AC/DC took Chuck Berry riffs, plugged them into a Marshall stack, and built an empire.

Guns N’ Roses was Aerosmith if they grew up on heroin and nihilism. Every “new” sound is an echo chamber of something older.

The bands that matter don’t deny it, they double down. They take, they mutate, they make it their own:

Motörhead never apologized for playing Little Richard at 200 bpm.

Nirvana admitted the Pixies blueprint but twisted it into generational rage.

Metallica wore their Diamond Head influence on their denim vests and built a movement around it.

Even Deep Purple’s Jon Lord said it out loud: they were just a classical keyboardist and a blues guitarist smashing their worlds together.

That’s the alchemy. You take with intent. You stitch together parts until the monster lurches to life and crushes cities.

The irony?

The more derivative, the more universal. That’s why your brain locks into a riff before you even realize it’s been done before. A familiar structure, dressed up and set on fire, is irresistible.

KISS concerts didn’t sell out because they were original, they sold out because they gave you rock ’n’ roll you already knew in a stadium-sized package. Motörhead didn’t endure because Lemmy invented something brand new, they endured because he made rock’s ugliest roots sound like the apocalypse.

Music survives by being contagious. Like a virus, it spreads, mutates, infects. Sabbath to Metallica to Pantera to Slipknot, it’s all one family tree, just different branches twisting toward the sun.

So let go of originality. It’s a marketing gimmick. What matters is whether the riff hits your gut, whether the chorus feels like a mob chant, whether it makes you want to smash a beer bottle and howl at the night sky.

Because nothing’s original.

And nothing’s ever hit harder.

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The Riff That Spawned a Dynasty

Some riffs are one-and-done. Others breed. The “Burn” riff, G minor, 1974, Deep Purple Mk III, isn’t just a classic. It’s a genetic code that’s been mutating for half a century, producing bastard children across bands, decades, and egos.

At the center?

Glenn Hughes and David Coverdale. The co-vocalists on “Burn.” One carried it like DNA in his blood (Hughes), the other twisted it into new forms with fresh partners (Coverdale).

The Glenn Hughes Line

Hughes/Thrall – “I Got Your Number” (1982): the first clear mutation, transposed into F♯m, slicker but still the gallop of “Burn.”

Gary Moore – “Run for Cover” (1985): Hughes on vocals again, Moore’s firepower channeling the same pulse.

John Norum – “Face the Truth” (1992): Hughes back at it, the riff sharpened into a darker ’90s hard rock blade.

Glenn doesn’t just sing. He drags the riff’s DNA forward, project after project, like a courier smuggling contraband across borders.

The David Coverdale / John Sykes Line

Coverdale didn’t let it die either. Teaming with John Sykes during Whitesnake’s MTV conquest, they bastardized the “Burn” riff into:

“Children of the Night” (1987, Gm): sleeker and turbocharged for the arenas of the late ’80s. Still “Burn”, just wearing more eyeliner.

Sykes wasn’t done. When he launched Blue Murder, he cloned his own mutation:

“Black Hearted Woman” (1989, Gm): “Burn” reborn again, heavier, moodier, drenched in Sykes’ Les Paul tone.

Coverdale and Hughes may have split paths, but both carried that same fire. One kept it soulful, elastic, shifting keys and contexts. The other turned it into arena thunder and hard rock melodrama.

But the story doesn’t stop there.

“Burn” didn’t come out of thin air. Nothing does. Ritchie Blackmore was reaching backward, too, straight into Gershwin.

Go spin “Fascinating Rhythm.” The horn stabs, the syncopation, the way it jerks forward like it’s about to combust. That’s the skeleton. Purple just plugged it into an amp and let it roar. Suddenly the city’s ablaze, the town’s on fire.

And it wasn’t just Hughes and Coverdale carrying the torch.

The infection spread further. Paul Stanley, yeah, the Starchild, was listening.

You can hear it in “I Stole Your Love.” Same pulse, same fire, dressed up in sequins and pyrotechnics.

Don’t take my word for it. Don’t argue. Hit play. The riff tells you everything.

The Family Tree

– “Fascinating Rhythm” (1924, George Gershwin) – the Jazz Standard

– “Burn” (1974, Deep Purple, Gm) – the hard rock origin.

– “I Stole Your Love” (1977, Kiss, C#m) – the first descendant

– “I Got Your Number” (1982, Hughes/Thrall, F♯m) – the second descendant.

– “Run for Cover” (1985, Gary Moore, F♯m, feat. Hughes) – the third generation.

– “Face the Truth” (1992, John Norum, F♯m, feat. Hughes) – the echo in the ’90s.

– “Children of the Night” (1987, Whitesnake, Gm, Coverdale/Sykes) – Coverdale’s bastard child.

– “Black Hearted Woman” (1989, Blue Murder, Gm, Sykes) – Sykes cloning himself.

It’s a family tree of riffs, sprouting new branches every time one of its carriers stepped into a studio.

Because this isn’t plagiarism, it’s proof of how riffs behave like living organisms. They survive by mutating, jumping bands, crossing decades. Glenn Hughes and David Coverdale, often painted as rivals in Purple, ended up as co-parents of a riff dynasty.

And every time that riff comes back, whether in Stanley’s face paint, Hughes’ soulful howl, Sykes’ molten Les Paul tone, or Coverdale’s snake-charmer swagger, you feel it. G minor or F♯ minor, it doesn’t matter. It’s still “Burn”.

The riff refuses to die. It just keeps coming back, louder, slicker, dirtier.

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A to Z of Making It, Classic Songs to Be Discovered, Influenced, Music, My Stories, Unsung Heroes

X Out – Extreme

When “Six” came out from Extreme in 2023, I did what we all do. I pressed play, skimmed the album, hit “like” on the tracks that grabbed me. Instant dopamine. Songs that felt like me, right now.

“X Out” didn’t make the cut.

Didn’t hate it, just didn’t hit.

Fast forward almost two years. The video drops. I click. And suddenly I’m sitting there, head nodding, totally into it. The same song I shrugged off is now on repeat.

So what happened?

This is the funny thing about music: sometimes it doesn’t connect the first time. Or the tenth. And then one day, in some random moment, it hits you like a freight train.

Maybe it’s mood. Maybe it’s life. Maybe it’s just time.

Or maybe, in this case, it’s the video.

Because visuals change everything. You see the band sweating it out, the editing, the vibe, the narrative. The song suddenly has a face, a story. And once that meaning slides into place, the music feels different. What was just sound is now an experience.

There’s probably a fancy psychological term for this. I googled my description and got a few terms which mean nothing to me like; “Mere exposure effect.” “Priming.” “Contextual reappraisal.” Whatever. To me, it’s just proof that taste is alive. It shifts. It evolves.

The truth is: I wasn’t ready for the song before. And now I am.

And that’s why I love when this happens. Because it keeps music from being disposable. Because it means an album isn’t done after the first spin.

Sometimes the tracks I skip become the ones that I like later.

So yeah, two years later, I’m in on “X Out.” All because of a video.

Check it out.

Makes me wonder: how many other songs did I dismiss too early? 

How many are just sitting there, waiting for me to finally catch up?

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Classic Songs to Be Discovered, Influenced, Music, My Stories

How Has It Aged: Iron Maiden – Dance Of Death

I don’t think there’s a bigger gap in all of metal between what your eyes see and what your ears hear than Iron Maiden’s “Dance of Death”

That cover?

The kind of thing you’d expect from a high schooler messing around with a pirated copy of 3D Studio Max in 1998. Or AI before AI was a thing.

Even Bruce admitted it was embarrassing. The artist literally pulled his name from the credits. Ouch.

But the music?

It rips. Maiden have always straddled old-school NWOBHM swagger and proggy sprawl, and here it actually clicks.

“Wildest Dreams”

“I’m gonna organize some changes in my life / I’m gonna exorcise the demons of my past”

This is the fantasy we all cling to, reinvention. The Monday morning promise that this week will be different. Except most people don’t make it past Tuesday.

Maiden’s framing it like a road trip, car, open road, freedom. But the truth is, it’s not about cars or roads, it’s about finally deciding you’re sick of your own excuses.

“Rainmaker”

How good is that intro?

“And the cracks in our lives like the cracks upon the ground / They are sealed and are now washed away”

Life is drought and flood. You hold on through the dry years, praying for rain that never comes. Then suddenly it pours, and for a second you think you’re redeemed.

But the cracks never really go away. They just fill up long enough for you to forget they’re there.

“No More Lies”

The bass intro. Typical Steve Harris. It builds momentum and the guitars decorate nicely.

“A hurried time no disgrace / Instead of racing to conclusion / And wishing all my life away”

This is the punch in the face. How much of your life have you already burned, fast-forwarding to some imagined future?

Graduation. Job. Promotion. Retirement.

Always waiting for the next thing instead of living the one thing. Harris is telling you flat out: stop trading your minutes for illusions.

“Montségur”

The song is forgotten at 3.92 million streams on Spotify. But it’s one of the best songs on the album.

“As we kill them all so God will know his own / The innocents died for the Pope on his throne”

This isn’t just history. This is the template. Power always finds a holy excuse. Wrap the violence in God, justice, freedom, it doesn’t matter. People still burn.

The castle becomes a metaphor for every system that crushes dissent under the flag of righteousness.

“Dance of Death”

Compared to other Maiden classics, 42.92 million streams is low.

With this, Maiden tried to recreate the vibe of “Fear Of The Dark”.

And when the solo sections kick in, a person would think they did.

“As I danced with the dead / My free spirit was laughing and howling down at me”

The most terrifying truth: sometimes we want the very thing that destroys us. There’s a seduction in surrender, in letting go of control and joining the dance.

The “dead” aren’t zombies, they’re every crowd you’ve ever followed against your better judgment. The fire looks dangerous, but it feels warm.

“Gates of Tomorrow”

The major key vibe shows their “Who” influences.

“There isn’t a god to save you if you don’t save yourself”

That’s it. The rawest line on the record. Forget prayers, forget systems, forget waiting. If you’re drowning, you don’t need an angel, you need to swim.

“New Frontier”

“Out beyond the new frontier / Playing god without mercy, without fear”

Science, AI, genetic engineering, Maiden saw the abyss before it had a name.

The question isn’t can we do it, it’s what happens when we do?

And the scariest part isn’t Frankenstein’s monster. It’s us realizing we’re no different than the monster.

“Paschendale”

Adrian Smith strikes again, crafting the music to one of my favourite songs on the album. And at 12.68 million streams on Spotify, it’s also forgotten.

“Blood is falling like the rain / Its crimson cloak unveils again”

This isn’t poetry. It’s eyewitness testimony. Every generation pretends their war is noble, unique. But the rain always turns red, the ground always swallows the boys, and the politicians always stay dry.

The most human line on the whole record: “Surely a war no-one can win.”

And yet we keep signing up.

“Face in the Sand”

“So I watch and I wait / And I pray for an answer / An end to the strife and the world’s misery / But the end never came”

This is apocalypse fatigue.

Everyone waiting for the end, everyone secretly hoping it will finally level the scales. But the world doesn’t collapse in fire. It just drags on.

More headlines, more waiting, more lies. The sand keeps shifting, and we’re still staring into it for signs.

“Age of Innocence”

“The working man pays everything for their mistakes / And with his life too if there was to be a war”

That’s the deal and always has been: the people in suits gamble, the people in uniforms pay.

The “age of innocence” isn’t about childhood. It’s about the brief moments in history when you forget the world is rigged against you.

And those moments don’t last.

“Journeyman”

“I know what I want / And I say what I want / And no one can take it away”

The whole album builds to this declaration. After death dances, wars, false prophets, and systemic lies, what’s left?

You.

Your voice.

Your will.

Maiden strip it all back at the end: acoustic guitars, no armor. The journeyman isn’t a hero. He’s just a man who refuses to shut up and disappear.

And Bruce?

The man sounds like he found a time machine back to 1982. He sings like he’s got something to prove, like he’s still fighting to be the frontman of the biggest metal band in the world.

The album’s sound takes a hit from the era’s ‘loudness wars’ mix.

So yeah, the cover’s a dumpster fire.

But the album?

It’s Iron Maiden still swinging for the fences in 2003, and connecting more often than not.

It’s their last album with an ’80s-style vibe before shifting into their pseudo-prog NWOBHM/rock phase.

Overall, “Dance of Death” maintains Iron Maiden’s signature sound while experimenting with different themes and musical styles.

The album’s mix of shorter, more straightforward tracks and longer, more intricate compositions contributes to its diverse appeal.

And for that, the album has aged well.

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