Category Archives: My Stories

Heavy Metal, Live Reviews, Music, My Stories

Killswitch Engage Turned Wollongong Into a Conveyor Belt

Waves at Towradgi Beach Hotel, Wollongong · 7 November 2026
Australia & New Zealand Tour 2026

The crowd surfers at Waves were coming through like luggage at an airport. As soon as one went over, another took their place. It got to the point where even Jesse Leach commented on how many people were coming over the top.

And this was Wollongong. My hometown.

I still get a kick out of typing that. Killswitch Engage have songs with hundreds of millions of Spotify streams, and here they were playing a sold-out show at Waves which is part of Towradgi Beach Hotel. I know what a hundred million streams looks like. I know what a sold-out Waves looks like, too. At this particular gig, it looked like a bloke travelling over my head while everyone below him sang.

I used to go to discos at Waves. It’s where I met my wife.

They’d played the Enmore in Sydney the night before. Great room. Shit parking. I love seeing a band there once I’ve stopped seeing the same three streets with parking inspectors ready to fine you. From Sydney they came down to Wollongong, then it was on to Melbourne for the last show of the tour. I’m used to seeing Sydney and Melbourne on a tour poster and this time my town was right there between them.

They opened with “Fixation on the Darkness” and “This Is Absolution,” then put “The End of Heartache” third. Third. Some bands would build the whole night around getting to that song. Killswitch still had “Daylight Dies,” “Rose of Sharyn,” “This Fire” and “My Curse” in their back pocket.

That’s what I love about this band. The riffs are fast and ferocious enough to get a circle pit going, and the melodies are good enough to make you want to sing while you’re running in it. As a songwriter, I’m always listening for what a band does to make the chorus lift. With Killswitch, half the answer is in what they do to you before the chorus. The riff gets your whole body involved. By the time the vocal melody comes around, you’re already in.

My favourite was “In Due Time.” It understands that despair is not the opposite of hope. It’s the place hope has to fight its way out of.

“Pacing aimlessly with my mind at unrest.”

The feeling of being trapped inside your own thoughts, walking nowhere while your brain keeps moving.

Then the chorus arrives with;

“See the world through different eyes.”

Not a miracle. Not an escape hatch. A change in perspective, earned the hard way.

And then:

“The shadows will give way to light.”

It’s a simple line, but that’s why it works. When you’re in the middle of it, you don’t need a complicated theory of recovery. You need somebody to tell you the darkness is not permanent.

“In Due Time” is about endurance, but it sounds like endurance in motion. You don’t sit with the pain. You push through it, surrounded by people doing the same thing.

“The End of Heartache” and “Rose of Sharyn” were written when Howard Jones was in the band. “My Curse” too. And there’s Jesse, who sang on “Fixation on the Darkness,” fronting a set that goes deep into both eras and still has room for “Forever Aligned” and “I Believe.” I like that they put “The Signal Fire” in there as well. On the record, you can hear Jesse and Howard on the same song. For all the time people have spent arguing about which singer they prefer, I’ve always liked hearing what happens when you get both.

And Jesse Leach.

Try singing one of those choruses after screaming your way through the verse. The clean vocal has to come in on pitch, the words have to be clear, and you’ve still got to sell the melody. Then the riff comes back and you’re down in a growl again. Jesse Leach kept making those turns all night.

I sing heavy music. I know what it feels like to come out of a scream and realise the next note has nowhere to hide. Jesse has to hit that note with a room full of people who know exactly how it goes. And then he has to get up and do it again the next night. Respect.

Joel Stroetzel and Adam Dutkiewicz were locked in the whole night. When Adam stepped out for a lead, Joel kept the riff going underneath him. It’s one of my favourite things to listen for in a two-guitar band. Your ear goes straight to the lead, but it’s the rhythm guitar that makes you feel where the solo is going.

Mike D’Antonio was the only bloke in the band with long hair, and he got his money’s worth out of it. He banged his head the whole damn night.

And listen to what Justin Foley does with his feet. Sometimes the double kick follows the guitar accents so closely you feel the riff hit twice. Then he’ll keep the kicks moving underneath and the whole song leans forward. The guitars can be going flat out and you still know exactly where the beat is. Handy when half the room is running in circles.

Seventeen songs. Circle pits all night. Enough people going over the top that the singer stopped to talk about it.

And for once, the gig I’d normally drive to Sydney for was at a club in Towradgi.

Setlist

  1. Fixation on the Darkness
  2. This Is Absolution
  3. The End of Heartache
  4. Aftermath
  5. A Bid Farewell
  6. In Due Time
  7. To the Sons of Man
  8. Unleashed
  9. Hate by Design
  10. Where It Dies
  11. Forever Aligned
  12. The Signal Fire
  13. I Believe
  14. Daylight Dies
  15. Rose of Sharyn
  16. This Fire
  17. My Curse
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Influenced, Live Reviews, Music, My Stories, Progressive metal

Evergrey at Crowbar: Nineteen Years Away, a Lifetime in the Songs

Crowbar, Leichhardt — 25 October 2026

Nineteen years.

That’s how long Tom Englund said it had been since Evergrey last played Australia.

Somehow, I missed that visit. In 2007, I was being pulled between work, study and a family with two small children. Keeping up with Swedish progressive metal touring schedules probably lost out to getting through the week.

This time, I drove to Sydney with my two sons. My youngest couldn’t come as he’s 14, but I still purchased a ticket for him that I couldn’t use.

The trip took more than ninety minutes. We used it to work through a Spotify playlist assembled from the setlists we’d seen online. Anticipation has its own soundtrack.

I’ve been an Evergrey fan since “In Search of Truth”.

“The Masterplan” was the entry point. Calling them an influence on my songwriting barely covers it. Their combination of heavy riffs, melodic guitar work and choruses carrying an unreasonable amount of emotional weight helped shape what I wanted my own songs to do.

So yes, this was a dream coming true.

And I brought my sons along to hear why.

Falling From the Sun

We sang the chorus out loud.

Whether anyone onstage could hear us, I have no idea. We weren’t waiting for confirmation.

The betrayal is the sun should sustain you. Here, it burns you.

That can be love. Ambition. Faith.

And they fall together, one after another.

It’s an Evergrey strength. The music gives your personal wreckage enough scale to fill a room, and suddenly you discover other people have been carrying something similar.

Where August Mourn

“I really need life to touch me.”

That line gets past all the usual defences.

You can function without feeling particularly alive. Work gets done. Obligations get met. People ask how you’re going and you give the answer that keeps the conversation moving.

Meanwhile, the dreams that once pulled you forward have become difficult to remember.

That’s what I hear here, someone exhausted by the distance between continuing and actually living.

You can market a song into somebody’s awareness. Getting it into their life is harder.

A line like this does the work.

Heaven

“Heaven show me!”

I hear impatience. Someone has had enough of being told a better existence is waiting somewhere beyond the one they’re enduring.

Show me something now.

Musically, the harmony lead break is my favourite part. It brings me back to the guitar passages before the chorus in “The Masterplan.”

That’s a huge part of why this band matters to me as a songwriter. You leave humming something.

Weightless

Guilt seems to be the only identity left.

Everything went wrong because of me. We got lost because of me.

Stay in that thinking long enough and being lost starts to feel permanent.

Then comes the water.

For me, the shift into weightlessness creates a moment of suspension.

“It’s over, it’s over my friend.”

Even suffering becomes familiar. You can know something is destroying you and still struggle to imagine yourself without it.

Eternal Nocturnal

Some of the best lead breaks of the night, with a chorus that keeps driving forward.

Underneath it is a vow: I’ll become the shelter, the hope, the eyes in the dark.

Evergrey can put that sentiment inside heavy music without sanding the weight off either.

Call Out the Dark

A massive eighties arena chorus, built around a title you want to throw back at the stage.

But the verse is where I keep returning.

“You’re safe when you’re alone.”

There’s comfort in that thought, and a cost.

Nobody can betray you if you stop letting anybody close enough. Eventually, though, protection can become confinement. The place you retreat to starts deciding how much of life you’re allowed to experience.

Then the chorus opens up, and all that private thinking becomes something people can sing together.

A Silent Arc

The opening feels like getting barrelled.

You surface for air, then the next wave takes you under. Up again. Under again.

That’s the physical sensation of the music for me. The passages of relief make the next impact heavier.

Then comes “Our heaven’s dead.”

I hear the death of a shared future. Two people can keep living inside a dream long after they’ve stopped doing anything to sustain it.

There’s grief in that admission, but also the awful clarity of no longer having to pretend.

The World Is on Fire

A world burning, with tears as the only available means of putting it out.

That’s the bill coming due.

Regret is real. So is its inadequacy.

Evergrey return to fire, water, darkness and light so often that these images begin to speak to each other across the catalogue. Salvation in one song becomes danger in another.

Which feels about right.

The thing that saves you at one point in your life can become the thing you need to escape later.

Words Mean Nothing / I’m Sorry

The keyboards deserve attention.

I love hearing arpeggios moving beneath a melody, creating motion and atmosphere at the same time. Those parts help give Evergrey their depth.

With music this heavy, it would be easy to fill every available space with more guitar.

The keys create another dimension for the songs to move through. And in songs concerned with what people say, conceal or fail to communicate, that additional voice matters.

Say

Arena rock.

That’s what this chorus is to me. Whatever genre classification you want to put around the band, they understand how to write a refrain that reaches beyond the technical machinery supporting it.

“Say before I’m getting used to this hurting.”

That’s the line.

Pain becomes especially dangerous when it becomes ordinary.

Architects of the New Weave

“We are the architects.”

I remember watching Englund explain in a YouTube video that he wanted a big chorus with the impact of “Rainbow in the Dark.”

I can hear what he was reaching for.

A phrase with enough space around it for an audience to inhabit.

There’s also a challenge in the title.

If we’re the architects, we inherit responsibility for what gets built. Blaming the design becomes more complicated when your own hands are on it.

A Touch of Blessing

I was so glad they played this.

More than twenty years later, the song still has teeth.

Its place within “The Inner Circle” gives it a particular context, but the language of devotion, manipulation and belonging reaches well beyond that story.

“Climbing walls of an endless circle.”

Working harder without getting anywhere. Every effort returns you to the same place, carrying a little less energy.

A cage with better lighting.

Then there’s “Crown me king and be my servants.”

The promise of liberation becomes a demand for obedience. Someone offers you meaning, certainty, a way out of your confusion. The price emerges after you’ve committed.

What makes that disturbing is how attractive the offer can be.

Manipulation works better when it understands what you’re missing.

And the people left behind? They become necessary sacrifices in the story you tell yourself about where you’re going.

These lyrics still matter because the mechanisms remain familiar.

King of Errors

When the video first appeared, with that shipping-yard setting and Henrik and Jonas back in the fold, my reaction was immediate.

Fuck yeah.

The Queensrÿche influence didn’t hurt either.

At Crowbar, I sang this at the top of my lungs.

There’s something vicious about the relationship between the crown and the fall. People elevate someone, invest their hopes in them, then watch the collapse as though they had nothing to do with building the platform.

The title can point in several directions.

The person making the mistakes. The people rewarding them. The machinery that turns human fallibility into public entertainment.

For a few minutes, though, analysis gave way to singing.

I’d waited long enough.

Leaving the Emptiness

Englund described it as a bouncing riff.

When it returned for the outro, the audience took the instruction.

This is one of those moments when the body understands the song before the brain has finished examining it.

Leave the emptiness behind. Get moving. Believe that change can save you.

Sometimes leaving is necessary.

But distance has limits. You can change the scenery while carrying every unresolved problem into the next room.

And underneath it, that riff keeps bouncing.

Oxygen!

The atmosphere gives this song a vastness.

There’s room inside it for the voice, the melody and the unease to spread.

The wish to be as strong as someone else catches my attention.

We’re looking at the part they can show us.

That’s how I hear the darkness and dependence in this song: someone searching for air while uncertain where it can be found.

Then it was over.

Did they play all my favourites?

No.

Englund had already dealt with that expectation through his humour, telling us early that we weren’t going to hear our favourite songs.

Fair enough.

Following a band for this long means building your own version of its catalogue. Certain songs attach themselves to particular years. Others become inseparable from what you were trying to survive, understand or write.

No setlist can reproduce all of that.

Tom Englund remains the constant at the centre of Evergrey, from “The Dark Discovery” in 1998 through to “Architects of a New Weave”. Musicians come and go. Joining Englund, are two other mainstays in Johan Niemann on bass and Rikard Zander on keys. Stephen Platt was also there on guitars and Simone “Symohn” Morettin from Elvenking was behind the kit for this show.

Keeping a band on the road means adapting, repeatedly, while preserving whatever made people care in the first place.

The evidence that people care is in moments like these.

A chorus starts and you know exactly where you are in it.

Englund spoke about music bringing people together. Music is my religion, and listening to him, I understood the shared conviction.

I’d spent more than two decades hearing parts of my own life in these songs. On 25 October, I finally stood in front of the band playing them.

With my two sons beside me and one who wished he could come but couldn’t.

Nineteen years earlier, life had helped me miss the show.

This time, I got to bring some of that life with me.

One heart. One soul.

Our hearts united.

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Australian Life, Business & Consumerism, Media & Entertainment, My Stories, Streaming & Entertainment, Technology & Culture, Television

Apparently, I Wasn’t That Valuable After All

Four months ago I cancelled Netflix.

Then Disney+. Then Prime. Then Paramount+.

I kept Stan. Because I’m in Australia, and I wanted the Premier League.

That was it.

Four months ago I went from paying for almost every major streaming service to paying for one.

And I expected something to happen. Because for the previous eight years I had apparently been a valued customer.

I know this because they kept telling me. Every time the price went up, there was some beautifully crafted email explaining how much they valued my loyalty.

They appreciated my continued support. They were investing in better content. They were committed to giving me the best possible entertainment experience.

And, presumably, they were committed to making sure I continued paying them.

So when I cancelled, I assumed someone would notice. Netflix would send me an offer. Disney would tempt me back. Prime would remind me of everything I was missing. Paramount would perhaps throw in a couple of months at a reduced price.

Something. Anything. Instead?

Nothing. Zilch. Silence. Apparently, I wasn’t that valuable after all.

Maybe I wasn’t a customer. Maybe I was a monthly transaction.

Prices going up isn’t particularly shocking. Everything goes up. Content costs money. Production costs money. Technology costs money. People want to be paid.

Fine.

But.

“Thank you for being a valued customer.”

Here’s your price increase.

“We appreciate your continued support.”

Here’s another price increase.

“We’re committed to providing you with an exceptional entertainment experience.”

We’ve added advertising.

Hang on.

Advertising?

Yes.

Prime was the one that really got me. I was already paying for Prime. Then the price increased. And somewhere along the way, advertising arrived.

I’m paying more. And now you’re selling my attention to somebody else. It sounds like a “Black Mirror” episode.

But streaming companies have somehow convinced us this is normal.

And we went along with it.

Another couple of dollars. Another tier. Another restriction. Another advertisement. Another service. Another subscription.

It’s death by a thousand monthly direct debits.

The genius of subscriptions is that they make spending invisible.

$15 doesn’t feel like much.

Neither does $20.

Neither does another $12.

Until you have six or seven companies reaching into your bank account every month.

The beauty of the model is that you forget you’re paying for it. Until you don’t.

And that was my experiment.

I stopped paying. And then I waited.

Four months.

Nothing happened. The world continued.

I didn’t run out of entertainment.

I watched other things. I watched football. I listened to music. I read. I wrote.

I found myself doing things that didn’t involve scrolling through an enormous catalogue trying to decide what to watch.

I hadn’t really missed most of them.

I had missed individual shows.

The platform wasn’t the product. The content was the product.

And once I’d consumed the content I cared about, the subscription became a habit.

This is where the “valued customer” language becomes interesting.

Because loyalty apparently means:

Keep paying.

That’s it.

There is very little reward for being loyal. The new customer gets the special introductory price.

Congratulations.

Your price just went up.

It’s backwards and subscription companies have normalised exactly that behaviour.

The longer you stay, the more certain they become that you’ll tolerate the next increase.

Until you don’t.

And then they discover something they should probably have understood from the beginning.

Loyalty isn’t ownership. The customer can leave.

And once you’ve made leaving easy, eventually people will test whether they actually need you.

That’s what I did.

The most powerful button is Cancel

There’s something psychologically strange about cancellation.

Signing up is exciting. There’s new content. New possibilities. Something to watch tonight.

Cancellation feels like you’re giving something up.

The companies understand this. They want you to feel that you’re losing access.

But after four months, I think the opposite happened.

I gained the ability to decide whether something was worth paying for.

The question became:

“What do I actually want to watch?”

If there’s something I genuinely want, I can subscribe again. I did it with Apple+ for the show “Slow Horses”. Subscribed for a month and clicked cancel.

The subscription model wants permanent membership. It wants your credit card attached to the service indefinitely. It doesn’t want a customer who says:

“I’ll pay you for one month, watch what I want, and then leave.”

There was a time when Netflix felt like a bargain.

One service. Huge catalogue. No advertisements.

Simple.

Then everyone realised streaming was the future. So everyone launched their own service.

Now the consumer is effectively rebuilding cable television one subscription at a time.

Netflix. Disney. Prime. Paramount. Stan. Binge. Apple TV+. HBO Max. Bein Sports. Fox Sports.

And whatever else I’ve forgotten while writing this.

The only difference is that instead of one large cable bill, we’ve got a collection of smaller bills that somehow feels less painful.

Until you add them together.

Streaming was supposed to liberate us from television’s old business model.

Instead, we’ve recreated it. Just with better interfaces.

The strangest part is still the silence.

Four months.

Nothing. And perhaps that tells me everything I need to know.

I was a valued revenue stream.

When the money stopped, the relationship stopped.

I’m okay with that.

I don’t owe Netflix loyalty. I don’t owe Disney loyalty. I don’t owe Prime loyalty. I don’t owe Paramount loyalty.

I’ll pay for something when I want it. I’ll cancel when I don’t.

That’s the deal.

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

Angry Anderson: We Can’t Be Beaten – Rose Tattoo, Rock ’n’ Roll & an Australian Icon

We used to sing “We Can’t Be Beaten” after every football game we played.

Every game.

It could have been our first win of the season and we sang it. It could have been another week of an unbeaten run and we sang it.

Win, lose, draw, the song belonged to the ritual. And maybe that is how I will always remember Angry Anderson.

He can’t be beaten. Not really.

He played a bikie in “Housos” who was basically impossible to beat in a fight. He sang “Suddenly,” one of the biggest power ballads to come out of Australian television, and somehow even a song from a completely different universe still sounded like Angry Anderson.

That is the trick with Angry.

You could put him anywhere and he remained Angry Anderson.

Hard rock band. Bikie comedy. Soap-opera power ballad. Mad Max. Rose Tattoo.

It didn’t matter. The voice came with him.

Gary “Angry” Anderson died on 21 September 2026, aged 79, after suffering a cardiac arrest.

And I keep coming back to the music. Because that is where I first knew him.

Before Rose Tattoo, there was Buster Brown.

Buster Brown formed in 1973 and released “Something to Say” the following year.

The drummer was Phil Rudd.

Yes. The same Phil Rudd who would leave and join an early version of AC/DC.

Anderson kept going however Buster Brown ended in 1975, and Anderson would soon become the voice of a band that would define Australian hard rock in a completely different way.

Rose Tattoo.

Peter Wells formed the band in Sydney in 1976 because he wanted something tough. Something built around slide guitar.

The first great statement arrived with “Bad Boy for Love.”

It was written by Ian Rilen, who left to form punk group X before the single was released. Geordie Leach, Anderson’s former Buster Brown bandmate, eventually joined the lineup that recorded most of the debut.

And then there was the production team.

Harry Vanda and George Young.

So when Rose Tattoo arrived in 1978, there was a lineage.

The blues had crossed the Atlantic. British bands absorbed American blues. British rock came to Australia. Australian musicians absorbed all of it.

And then they made it sound like home.

Rock ‘n’ Roll Outlaw

“Rock N Roll Outlaw” sounds like a mission statement.

The blues-rock vocabulary of Britain and America is all over Rose Tattoo, but the important thing is what they do with it.

We talk about the Rolling Stones, Cream, Free, Led Zeppelin. We talk about AC/DC.

But underneath all of that is the original source material: Black American blues musicians like Chuck Berry, Robert Johnson, Muddy Waters, Albert King whose music was absorbed, reinterpreted and fed back into the world through British and Australian rock.

Rose Tattoo didn’t invent the language. They spoke it with an Australian accent.

“Nice Boys” is probably the easiest entry point. If you don’t know the Rose Tattoo version, you may know the Guns N’ Roses version.

“The Butcher and Fast Eddy” is Angry in storyteller mode.

Someone got stabbed. Here is what happened. Next song.

“One of the Boys” has that Status Quo pulse. “Remedy” is AC/DC with the volume turned up. “Bad Boy for Love” is the obvious classic. “T.V.” is twelve-bar blues.

No dissertation required.

“Stuck on You” is the curveball, almost a love song, with a melodic acoustic guitar figure underneath the chorus.

Then “Tramp,” with “Let There Be Rock” energy, and “Astra Wally,” which feels like the offspring of “Tramp” and “T.V.”

Ten songs. No wasted motion. Just get on with it.

The band toured America and Europe, recorded an unreleased album in Los Angeles, and came home. Then, in 1981, “Rock N Roll Outlaw” started charting in Europe.

So they went back. That’s the music business.

Assault & Battery

Three years after the debut came “Assault & Battery”.

This is where my relationship with Rose Tattoo gets interesting.

I don’t think it has the same collection of songs that immediately grab you by the throat. But I think the band is getting better.

Better musicianship. Better lyrics. More ambition.

Start with “Magnum Maid.”

“We’re never gonna catch the criminals / As long as they’re runnin’ the show.”

That is the eternal rock and roll conspiracy theory. The criminals aren’t hiding. They’re running the place.

Then Angry turns the gun into a character. The “Magnum Maid” isn’t just a weapon. She’s salvation. Revenge. The last thing a desperate man has left when every institutional answer has failed.

By the end of the song it feels like you’re lying in the gutter with two bullets left.

No cavalry. No government. No committee. Just the gun and one last decision.

That’s Angry’s world.

When the system doesn’t work, you don’t write a submission.

You reach for the Magnum.

“Sidewalk Sally” takes the opposite approach.

“She knows what she is selling.”

“French or Greek don’t cost much.”

No university degree required. You know exactly what is happening.

Scarred For Life

The third album arrived within a year in 1982

No three-year gap this time.

The opening is a knockout.

“I grew up fast on a working class streets.”

“First thing I learned was life don’t come cheap.”

That’s Angry Anderson in two lines.

Not a victim. Not a hero. A battler.

Somebody who has been punched around by life and decided to punch back.

Then comes “We Can’t Be Beaten.”

And there it is.

The song we used to sing after football. The song that makes the whole thing personal for me.

“If you want to be in my gang…”

That is the invitation. To belonging. Stand with me. We’ll start something. We’ll fight for something. We’ll make some noise.

The song is simple. That’s why it works. And it isn’t really about winning. It’s about refusing to accept defeat as an identity.

“Juice On The Loose” is basically “Bad Boy For Love” with another coat of paint. And again, I like it.

“Branded” is where Rob Riley becomes impossible to ignore. He co-wrote “We Can’t Be Beaten,” “Scarred For Life,” “Branded” and “It’s Gonna Work Itself Out.”

“I’ve had enough and now I’m gonna fight back.”

Again, Angry doesn’t write a self-help book. He writes a chorus.

Then there’s “Revenge.”

The song contains lines about immigrants, religion, unions and government that reflect a particular strain of working-class Australian grievance. Some of the language is explicitly hostile and exclusionary.

You don’t have to pretend otherwise.

But you also don’t need to pretend the song doesn’t exist.

The underlying emotion is easier to recognise than the politics, someone has taken something that belonged to me.

My city. My work. My country. My life. My dignity.

That is the engine underneath the song.

Angry is giving voice to a worldview that is angry about a world changing underneath him.

The problem is that the song doesn’t stop at describing that anger.

It assigns blame. Sometimes the artist is documenting the ugliness. Sometimes the artist is participating in it. Sometimes it’s both.

Southern Stars

Then came another lineup change.

By 1983, Rob Riley, Dallas Royall and Peter Wells had all left.

Anderson and Geordie Leach rebuilt the band again, and “Southern Stars” arrived in 1984.

And this is where I disagree with the people who want every great band to make the same record forever.

I love this change. The blues rock is still there. The boogie is still there. But the choruses are getting bigger. The songwriting is evolving.

It’s not Rose Tattoo abandoning Rose Tattoo.

It’s Rose Tattoo trying to work out what Rose Tattoo sounds like four records into a career.

If you make the first record four times, you haven’t preserved your identity. You’ve preserved your business model.

“Southern Stars” is more AOR without becoming AOR. The guitars still have dirt under their fingernails. But there is more melody. More space. More ambition.

And lyrically, Angry is at his most openly political and philosophical.

“The ghosts of Eureka are calling to me now.”

“I wanna live my life under Southern Stars.”

Anderson described the album as being about the spirit of Eureka and said its patriotism was intended to extend beyond Australia to humanity as a whole.

That’s important because “Southern Stars” is really an album about freedom.

“Let Us Live” strips it back. Let us be what we want to be. Let us go where we want to go. Let us say what we want to say. Let us live our own lives.

Not necessarily left. Not necessarily right. Just leave me alone and let me live.

“Freedom’s Flame” and “Death Or Glory” turn that idea into mythology: tribes rise, soldiers arrive, fires burn, people refuse to surrender.

Again, Angry isn’t writing a policy paper. He’s writing mythology.

And then there’s “You’ve Been Told.”

The riff takes me straight back to that Richie Blackmore school of blues-based hard rock.

But lyrically?

This is Angry enjoying himself.

Women. Bourbon. Drugs. Cigars. Rock and roll.

Just a bloke telling you exactly what he likes.

And finally:

“The Radio Said Rock ‘n’ Roll Is Dead.”

Of course it did. Somebody always says it’s over. And then some idiot plugs in a guitar.

That is the joke.

Rock and roll doesn’t survive because the radio says it should.

It survives because somebody somewhere still needs it.

Suddenly

Anderson went on to play Ironbar Bassey in Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, and Rose Tattoo eventually gave way to his solo career.

Then came “Suddenly.”

A song that could have destroyed the whole image. Instead it became another Angry Anderson song.

It found a much larger audience when it was used for Scott and Charlene’s wedding on Neighbours, reaching No. 2 in Australia.

The same voice that had spent the previous decade singing about street fights, criminals, revolution and rock and roll was suddenly singing a giant romantic ballad on television.

And it worked. That is Angry.

His 1990 solo album “Blood from Stone” produced “Bound for Glory,” a No. 11 hit.

“Life’s tough / So what? / I’m alive.”

“I’ve been down / Seen hard times / But I survived.”

He could have made an entire career out of that sentence.

Rose Tattoo eventually reunited, and I saw them on the Guns N’ Roses “Use Your Illusion” tour.

They rocked. And I was more than happy to cross Rose Tattoo off my list. The Gunners are a different story. I’ve already written about that.

And that is where my musical journey with Angry ends.

I haven’t listened to the “Pain” and “Blood Brothers” albums from the 2000s.

I will.

And maybe that is the best way to remember Angry Anderson.

As the voice that refused to soften. The little bloke with the enormous presence.

The voice that could sing about a street fight, a revolution, a woman, a working-class battler, a Magnum revolver, Australian freedom or a wedding on Neighbours and somehow still make it sound like Angry Anderson.

He wasn’t supposed to fit neatly. Neither did Rose Tattoo. And that’s probably why they lasted.

We used to sing “We Can’t Be Beaten” after every football game.

I think I understand it differently now. It wasn’t really a song about being unbeatable.

Nobody is.

It’s a song about standing up with your people and deciding that losing isn’t going to define you.

Angry Anderson spent fifty years doing exactly that.

The band changed. The members changed. The sound changed. The country changed. He changed. But he kept getting back on stage.

One more tour. One more record. One more song. One more fight. Until there wasn’t another one.

And now we sing it without him.

We can’t be beaten.

Maybe that’s the point.

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Influenced, Music, My Stories, Unsung Heroes

TesseracT’s Nocturne Isn’t Just a Song. It’s a Question We Still Haven’t Answered.

On Thursday, 23 July 2026, I stood inside the Hordern Pavilion waiting for Karnivool, but if I’m being honest, I was just as excited to finally experience Tesseract live.

I’d heard plenty about them. I’d spent years with “Altered State”. But there are albums that belong in headphones, and there are songs that only reveal themselves when several thousand people are breathing in time with them.

They opened with “Natural Disaster”, and within minutes the room belonged to them. Then the unmistakable opening of “Nocturne” arrived, and everything changed.

For me, it isn’t just one of Tesseract’s finest songs.

It’s one of progressive metal’s defining moments of the last decade.

Because beneath all of that complexity sits a question so uncomfortable that it refuses to let go.

Can we save us from ourselves?

That’s the genius of “Nocturne”.

Most songs give you a villain. Someone to blame. A government. A relationship. A broken society. An enemy lurking somewhere over the horizon.

Tesseract turns the mirror around.

What if the plague isn’t outside?

What if it’s us?

Spend five minutes reading the comments on YouTube or Reddit discussions and you’ll notice something fascinating. Nobody seems to agree on exactly what the song is about, yet almost everyone walks away feeling the same thing.

Some hear climate anxiety. Others hear depression. Some hear a civilisation slowly collapsing under the weight of its own denial. Others hear a deeply personal battle with fear, addiction or grief.

The beauty is that every interpretation works because they’re all connected by one simple truth.

Human beings have an incredible ability to see disaster approaching while convincing ourselves we’ll somehow be the exception.

We postpone difficult conversations. We ignore obvious warning signs.We mistake optimism for action. We call it hope when, sometimes, it’s simply denial wearing better clothes.

“Denial’s an impairment of your fear.”

Most writers would tell you fear creates denial. Tesseract flips the equation.

Denial doesn’t remove fear. It weakens our ability to confront it.

The longer we pretend something isn’t happening, the more power we quietly hand over to it.

“False hope sells lies. I won’t buy.”

Every day we’re offered comforting stories. Everything will be okay. Someone else will fix it. Tomorrow will be different. No changes required.

The easiest thing in the world is to purchase another comforting narrative.

The hardest thing is accepting reality exactly as it is. Because reality is where change begins.

“Only on the brink can we see so clearly.”

History is full of examples. Businesses don’t reinvent themselves when they’re thriving. Remember Kodak, BlackBerry and the recording industry post Napster.

People don’t usually change while life is comfortable. Relationships aren’t repaired until they’re almost over. Perspective has an unfortunate habit of arriving late.

Sometimes we need to stand on the edge before we finally recognise where we’ve been walking all along.

And then there’s the ending.

Four simple words repeated over and over.

“Wake me up.”

By the final repetition it doesn’t even sound like singing anymore.

It sounds like surrender.

Maybe that’s why “Nocturne” has aged so well.

It doesn’t belong to 2013.

It belongs to every generation that believes tomorrow will somehow arrive without requiring anything from today.

Walking out of the Hordern Pavilion, I wasn’t thinking about odd time signatures, guitar tones or vocal ranges.

I was thinking about a single question that had been echoing through the room all night.

Can we save us from ourselves?

The unsettling part is that thirteen years later, it still feels like the most important question anyone is asking.

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Alternate Reality, Music, My Stories

Motley Crue

Back before the internet, rock mythology lived in the gaps. The gaps between announcements and releases. The gaps between rumors and facts. The gaps between what bands said publicly and what was actually happening behind studio doors.

And sometimes those gaps leave behind artifacts.

Like this old UK metal magazine clipping from Kerrang, claiming Mötley Crüe’s next album after “Girls, Girls, Girls” was going to be called “Too Hot To Handle”.

Not a rumor whispered by a fan on Reddit thirty years later. An actual printed story. With a release date. A European tour plan. And a track listing full of songs nobody has ever officially heard.

Now, if you’re under forty, you probably think this means one of two things: Either it was fake or somebody got it wrong.

But that’s because modern audiences don’t understand how information moved in the ‘80s.

Music journalism back then wasn’t journalism in the modern sense. It was half-access, half-chaos, half-propaganda and half-drunk-guy-at-the-bar storytelling. Labels leaked incomplete information. Managers exaggerated. Journalists filled in blanks. Bands changed direction midstream because somebody overdosed, disappeared, got arrested, the label rejected it or the band decided the entire record sucked halfway through recording it.

Especially Mötley Crüe.

Which means this article was likely discussing the project that eventually became “Dr. Feelgood”.

And suddenly the timeline becomes incredibly interesting, because the article mentions a January release schedule.

But “Dr. Feelgood” didn’t come out until August 1989.

So what happened to push the date out?

Nikki Sixx overdose on December 23, 1997. The overdose fundamentally interrupted the momentum of the band. Tours were cancelled. Europe got burned. The machine stalled out.

Maybe “Too Hot To Handle” was the original album title. Maybe those track names were demo titles. Maybe the record was originally intended to be a faster, dirtier continuation of “Girls, Girls, Girls”.
Maybe songs were abandoned after rehab, rewrites and Bob Rock entered the picture.

Because here’s the thing people forget about “Dr. Feelgood”:

That album sounds NOTHING like a band spiraling out of control.

It sounds focused. Massive. Disciplined. Intentional.

Bob Rock basically forced Mötley Crüe to stop behaving like a gang and start behaving like a professional recording act. Vince had to get vocal lessons before he started to record the vocals. The grooves tightened. The hooks became sharper. The production became cinematic. The chaos got filtered into something enormous.

That version of the band did not exist when this article was printed.

And honestly, the album titles themselves tell the story better than anything else.

“Too Hot To Handle” sounds like old Crue. Cartoon sleaze. Sunset Strip excess. Cheap danger.

“Dr. Feelgood” sounds darker. More narcotic. More sinister. Like the party stopped being fun.

One title sounds like a band chasing pleasure. The other sounds like a band trying to survive it.

Does the article prove some lost Mötley Crüe album exists in a vault somewhere.

Maybe it does. Maybe it doesn’t.

What matters is that this article captures a moment before rehab rewrote the band. Before Bob Rock transformed them.

And maybe that’s what made the pre-internet era better.

Mystery.

You didn’t know everything. You weren’t supposed to. The uncertainty was part of the experience.

Now every demo gets uploaded instantly. Which I love by the way. Every studio update becomes social media content. Every rumor gets “fact checked” within ten minutes by people who confuse searchable information with understanding.

But rock mythology was built on incomplete information.

On possibility.

On strange magazine clippings that make you wonder whether somewhere, buried in a storage locker or sitting on an old cassette tape in Nikki Sixx’s archive, there’s an alternate version of Mötley Crüe history labeled:

“Too Hot To Handle”.

P.S.

The full track listing is as follows:
Side One; “You And Me”, “Dollar In My Pocket”, “Too Hot To Handle”, “Poisonous Dreams”, “Highway To Hell”.

Side Two; “Wake Up”, “Dead Man”, “War Of All Wars”, “LA”, “California Girls” (a jazzed up version of the Beach Boys classic).

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Influenced, Music, My Stories, Unsung Heroes

Leaving The Emptiness: The Moment Evergrey Turned Outward

There’s a shift happening here, and it’s not subtle.

Evergrey have always lived in the tension. Melancholy wrapped in complexity. Songs that feel like they’re carrying emotional debt. But “Leaving The Emptiness” doesn’t just sit in that space, it pivots out of it.

When you look at the credits, Jacob Hansen, Tom Englund, and Vikram Shankar, you start to see the architecture behind the sound. This isn’t just a band writing inward anymore. This is a collaboration engineered for impact.

And Hansen… he’s the wildcard that isn’t supposed to be a wildcard.

This guy came up through Invocator, which tells you everything about his musical DNA. Precision. Aggression. Structure. Then he pivots into Pyramaze, melody, grandeur, hooks. And somewhere along the way, behind the desk, he becomes a sculptor of modern metal, shaping bands like Volbeat, Primal Fear, and Amaranthe into streamlined, digestible forces.

So when you hear that intro riff… it makes sense.

Because that riff isn’t “Evergrey” in the traditional sense. It’s not brooding, not buried in layers of progressive nuance. It’s immediate. It’s physical. It’s designed. You don’t think about it, you react to it.

It’s the kind of riff that lives in contradiction. Heavy enough to nod your head like you mean it. Melodic enough to hum five seconds later. Simple enough to remember. Polished enough to sell.

So what you’re hearing isn’t a betrayal of identity. It’s a recalibration.

Because in a landscape where progressive metal can disappear into its own reflection, this kind of track cuts through. It doesn’t ask for patience, it demands attention.

“I lost my keys to heal but I don’t know where”

That’s not just a lyric, that’s modern existence in one sentence.

Everyone’s looking for the fix, the unlock, the cheat code to feeling whole again, and no one knows where they left it. It’s not hidden, it’s misplaced. Big difference.

Because if it’s hidden, someone else has it. If it’s misplaced, it’s on you. That’s the weight.

“I’m here to find some ways to make this worth it”

That’s the grind. Not purpose handed down from above, constructed in real time. Trial and error. Most people are waiting for meaning to arrive. This line says: it doesn’t. You build it or you don’t have it.

“I’m leaving the emptiness behind”

That’s the declaration. Not subtle, not poetic in a cryptic way, just a line drawn in the sand. You either believe it or you don’t. And the power of it? It’s not in certainty. It’s in the attempt.

Then comes the solo. Not polite, not restrained. This is full-blown guitar hero territory. The kind of lead that doesn’t ask if it fits the song, it becomes the moment.

If this was 1987, these guys would be sharing cover space with Eddie Van Halen Vito Bratta and George Lynch, tabs printed, kids rewinding cassette tapes trying to catch every note.

The real question isn’t whether it’s good. It’s a reminder of what’s been missing.

“Architects Of A New Weave” is due on June 5, 2026. I was meant to see them in Sydney on May 1, but it was postponed to October due to travel issues.

And from hearing the first three pre-release singles, Evergrey aren’t just evolving, they’re repositioning. Moving from introspective architects of sorrow to something more immediate, more physical… maybe even more dangerous in a mainstream sense.

And that riff?

That’s the tell.

It’s not just catchy.

It’s intentional. Crank it.

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

Nobody Rides For Free

There’s something unsettling about a band when they stop sounding like themselves… and somehow become more honest because of it.

That’s what “Nobody Rides for Free” feels like.

It doesn’t belong neatly anywhere. Not on an album. Not in the canon people casually reach for when they say Ratt. It lives off to the side, buried in the sunburnt chaos of “Point Break”, a film about adrenaline, identity, and the cost of chasing something you can’t hold onto.

Which is exactly what this song sounds like.

This wasn’t just another track.

It’s their first recording without Robbin Crosby, the muscle behind “Ratt ‘N’ Roll” and whether you think that absence directly shaped the song or not, you can feel the air change. The density is gone. The gloss is stripped back. What’s left is space… and in that space, something more dangerous creeps in.

Restraint.

Ratt were never about restraint.

They were about excess, hooks, attitude, swagger. The Sunset Strip distilled into sound. But here? The arrangement breathes. It doesn’t pile on. It withholds. The guitars don’t smother you, they stalk. Warren DeMartini plays like a guy who knows silence is a weapon.

And Stephen Pearcy doesn’t seduce here.

He warns.

That’s the shift most people miss.

This isn’t “come along for the ride.”

It’s “understand the cost before you even think about getting in.”

Even the DNA of the song hints at something different. You’ve got Steve Caton, a guy shaped by film and television, writing alongside Pearcy, DeMartini, and Juan Croucier. That matters. Because this song doesn’t just play, it frames. It feels like a scene. A tension arc. A moment where the character realizes the rules have changed and nobody bothered to tell them.

Then again, the large amounts offered to artists to submit soundtrack songs is a huge incentive.

And then you hit the title.

“Nobody rides for free”

Every choice has a cost. Every high comes with a tab you don’t see until later.

In life? It’s everything.

Relationships. Careers. Identity.

You think you’re getting away with something.

You’re not.

The bill just hasn’t arrived yet.

“In my dreams see I’m on TV / Get back exactly who I wanna be”

This is identity as performance.

Not discovery, construction.

It assumes the version of you in your head is already valid, already formed, already worthy, just waiting for recognition.

But reality doesn’t reward internal narratives. It rewards execution.

So there’s tension here: the dream self is controlled, admired, defined while the real self is blocked, frustrated, unproven.

And that gap?

That’s where most people stall out.

“I’m sick and tired of it getting in my way”

This is the line where ambition turns impatient.

“It” is never defined, which is the point.

“It” becomes: Other people, systems, limitations or, more uncomfortably… your own lack of progress

You either: remove the obstacle, or keep blaming it

Most people choose the second option because it protects the ego.

“Don’t stop to think ’cause I know where I stand”

This is pure momentum thinking. And it’s seductive as hell.

Because overthinking kills action, but not thinking at all kills direction.

“You’ve gotta pay to play”

This is the thesis. Strip everything else away, this is the operating system.

Nothing is free: not success, not freedom, not identity and not even escape

You pay in something: time, reputation, relationships or sanity

And here’s the uncomfortable truth most people avoid: you don’t get to choose if you pay. You only choose what you pay with.

That’s the real contract.

“You thought he could swim but I guess you were wrong / You sink to the depths of your misery”

This is where the fantasy collapses.

Someone bet on ability, maybe their own, maybe someone else’s, and lost.

And the wording matters: “Thought he could swim” is assumed competence. “Sink to the depths” is reality doesn’t negotiate.

This is what happens when self-perception isn’t matched by capacity.

And the world is ruthless about exposing that gap.

No warning. No soft landing. Just gravity.

Nobody Rides for Free isn’t a freedom anthem. It’s a cost-of-entry manifesto.

Wrapped in attitude, sure. Delivered like defiance. But underneath, it’s brutally transactional.

You want the life? Pay for it.

You think you’re ready? Prove it.

You believe your own hype? The fall is coming.

And that’s why it feels “un-Ratt-y.”

Because it’s not selling the dream.

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A to Z of Making It, Derivative Works, Influenced, Music, My Stories

The Record Vault and Australian Method Series: AC/DC – High Voltage (Australian version)

You can almost hear the hum of fluorescent lights in every suburban garage where AC/DC began. No glamour. No myth. Just sweat, static, and the clank of an amplifier that sounded like it had been dropped down the stairs. But that was the point. They weren’t selling dreams, they were bottling defiance.

Australia’s still shaking off its colonial hangover. The cultural exports were imports: Beatles on the airwaves, Hollywood in the cinemas, the British accent of cool still echoing through every youth who wanted to be someone. Then a gang of scruffy kids plugged in, turned up, and said no.

That “no” became “High Voltage”.

It wasn’t just an album, it was an interruption. A distortion through the polite frequencies of a country too afraid to sound like itself. Angus in his schoolboy outfit, Bon with a sneer that smelled like whiskey and danger, these weren’t poses. They were weapons. They took the mundane, working-class energy of a thousand sticky-carpet pubs and turned it into electricity.

The riffs weren’t clever. They were necessary. Simple, repetitive, primal. Music that didn’t care what you thought of it, it only cared that you felt it. The kind of sound that doesn’t wait for permission to exist.

AC/DC didn’t need validation from London or Los Angeles. They built their empire on beer-stained stages, not industry handshakes. They weren’t trying to be global, they were trying to be alive. And that’s why the world eventually came to them.

When “High Voltage” dropped, it shocked a nation still tangled in its moral corset. Parents hated it. Radio hesitated. The press called it obscene. Good. That’s how you know it’s real. Every moral panic in history has started with the sound of youth refusing to behave.

And here’s the thing, Bon Scott wasn’t just singing about sex and sin. He was singing about freedom. About living with the volume stuck on eleven because the alternative was silence. He wasn’t poetic; he was truthful. In a world that worships polish, truth sounds dirty.

Fifty years later, they still haven’t diluted it. They didn’t need to reinvent themselves, because the formula wasn’t a formula, it was a philosophy. Do one thing, do it honestly, and never flinch.

That’s the real cultural revolution AC/DC started: not rebellion for its own sake, but the audacity to be unapologetically yourself. To take your flaws, your roots, your rough edges, and broadcast them like a lightning bolt across the sky.

Australia didn’t just gain a rock band that year, it gained a backbone.

And maybe that’s the lesson that keeps echoing: every era needs its “High Voltage” moment, that instant where you stop waiting for validation and start amplifying who you already are.

It’s not nostalgia. It’s a reminder.

You don’t need the world’s permission to make noise.

You just need an amp, a song, and the courage to flick the switch.

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A to Z of Making It, Derivative Works, Influenced, Music, My Stories, Unsung Heroes

Ross The Boss – Heyday: The Record That Refused to Belong Anywhere

Ross the Boss is gone.

Most people will stop the story at Manowar. Big sound, bigger mythology. Steel, leather, and volume turned into identity.

But that’s only half the truth.

Because in 1994, when rock was busy cannibalising itself into subgenres and scenes, Ross dropped “Heyday”. One album. No follow-up. No safety net. And now… not even on streaming.

Which makes it dangerous.

Because you can’t casually consume it. You have to commit to it.

Ross wrote a manifesto in the liner notes:

“When I started playing guitar, it didn’t matter what type of Rock ‘N’ Roll you played, it was all just called ROCK! It hadn’t yet become so segregated into so many labeled categories.

Now, after twelve allums, I find myself, once again, going against the grain of the “mainstream”, playing the music that I choose to – and just having a great time with it.

So whether the mainstream becomes the underground; or the underground becomes the mainstream, Heyday is going to ROCK!”

That’s not nostalgia. That’s defiance.

By ’94, rock had fractured into tribes, grunge, metal, alternative, punk revival and let’s not mention how many labels hard rock and metal went into, each one building fences to keep the others out.

And Ross? He walks straight through all of them.

Blues rock. NWOBHM. New York punk. Glam attitude.

No permission. No alignment.

If the world narrows, you widen.

This wasn’t a solo indulgence. This was a unit: Ross the Boss on guitar, Charlie Cayte on vocals, Richie Fazio on drums and Erik Boyd on bass.

Charlie Cayte is the ghost in this machine. One of those singers who should’ve been everywhere… but got caught in the wrong year.

Because by 1994, the industry had already decided what rock shouldn’t sound like.

Mine Tonight

It starts with a riff that doesn’t ask, doesn’t build, doesn’t tease, it arrives.

Immediate. Violent. Alive.

“Now I’m aware of mine, are you aware of yours?”

That line hits because most people aren’t.

They hesitate. They soften. They hide behind ambiguity.

This song doesn’t.

Know what you want. Say it. Most people never do, and that’s why they never get it.

Mother Mary

This should have been massive. Arena chorus. Built for thousands.

Instead, it got buried.

“Mother Mary did you make the people, or did we make you?”

That’s not rebellion, it’s interrogation.

We build belief systems, then kneel to them. Religion, careers, identities. We forget we created them in the first place.

“I’ve been prayin’ for so long, to someone I don’t know…”

That’s existential drift.

If you don’t choose your beliefs consciously, you’ll spend your life serving them unconsciously.

A Matter of Time

Blues creeps in. Not as a genre, as a truth.

“To wait for the right moment was my first mistake.”

There is no right moment.

There’s only the moment you either take, or lose.

“I was born too early, and you were born too late.”

Timing isn’t romantic. It’s ruthless.

Hesitation doesn’t protect you, it erases you.

Brown Eyed Girl

A Van Morrison classic, dragged through a louder, dirtier filter.

Less nostalgia. More movement.

It’s not trying to improve the original, it’s reclaiming it. Making it live in this band’s world.

And that’s the point of covers when they work: not tribute, transformation.

Private Hell

This is where the album turns inward.

“I built the inferno…”

That’s the line.

Because people love blaming the fire, but not building it.

“Now a key’s been handed down my way…”

Recognition is the key. Not escape.

The moment you admit you built the problem is the moment you gain the power to dismantle it.

Movin’ On

This one swings.

You can hear echoes of Van Halen swagger and AC/DC punch. It’s reckless, fast, borderline unhinged.

“When push comes to shove, I’m gone.”

That’s freedom, but also avoidance.

There’s a fine line between movement and escape.

Reinvention is powerful, but if you never stay, you never build anything that lasts.

The Letter

The emotional core channeling Hendrix and “Little Wing”.

No metaphor. No disguise.

“What’s done is done and it can’t be changed.”

That’s it.

No modern spin. No redemption arc baked in.

Then the dagger:

“If I could call back father time… things would be the same.”

That’s self-awareness at its most brutal.

It’s not about wishing for a redo. It’s about understanding you weren’t ready to choose differently.

Don’t chase second chances. Build the mindset that wouldn’t need one.

Pack of Lies

Anger, but focused.

“You’re the first to sign the card, but the last to write the check.”

That line lands in any era.

Performative virtue. Empty signalling. Talking big, doing nothing.

Integrity is measured in action, not alignment.

Search and Destroy

A cover of Iggy Pop, but stripped of subtlety and pushed into hard rock aggression.

It’s less art-punk, more street fight.

And it works, because the band commits fully. No irony. No distance.

Back Where I Belong

Back to that EVH stomping groove. Back to weight.

“No way to know what feels right until you give it a try.”

Simple. True. Rarely followed.

People want certainty before action. Life doesn’t work that way.

Experience is the only real teacher, and it charges upfront.

It’s not just a “lost album.”

It’s a contradiction: Too late for the scene it belonged to. Too early for the nostalgia cycle that would’ve saved it. Too honest to reshape itself for trends

So it disappeared.

But that’s also why it still works.

Because it’s not tied to anything external.

It’s tied to a mindset: Play what you believe. Say what you mean. Accept the consequences.

No compromise. I called it:

“A perfect slab of hard rock.”

And it is.

But underneath that? It’s a manual.

On desire. On belief. On regret. On consequence. On owning your life, even when you get it wrong.

Most albums chase relevance. Heyday rejected it. And that’s exactly why it still matters. If you find the CD at a used store, buy it.

Rest in peace, Ross the Boss.

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