Tag Archives: Classic Rock

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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Marcie Free’s Hidden Fire: The Soul Behind Ready to Strike

It’s 1985.

The Sunset Strip is still a religion, and every kid with a can of Aqua Net thinks they’re destined for MTV.

Out of the chaos comes King Kobra’s debut “Ready to Strike”.

Led by guitarists David Michael-Philips & Mick Sweda.

David Michael‑Philips briefly joined Keel before being recruited by drummer Carmine Appice for King Kobra in 1984. Mick Sweda had been doing East Coast cover/punk stuff, moved to L.A., and was also tapped by Appice for Kobra.

After Kobra he co-founded Bulletboys with Marq Torien.

Johnny Rod held the low end here and after King Kobra he joined W.A.S.P., appearing on “Inside the Electric Circus”, “Live…in the Raw”, “The Headless Children”.

The season veteran here was drummer Carmine Appice, coming from Vanilla Fudge, Rod Stewart, Ozzy Osborne and the architect behind King Kobra. Post-Kobra he went on to other projects (including Blue Murder with John Sykes).

And a singer named Mark Free, the kind of vocalist who could level you with a single held note.

And now, that voice is gone. Marcie Free (Mark transitioned in the 90s), passed away. No reasons given. Maybe there doesn’t need to be one. Sometimes the world just loses a frequency.

Listen to “Ready to Strike” today and tell me you don’t feel it. That impossible range. That clean, surgical tone cutting through Spencer Proffer’s slightly overcompressed mix.

“Ready To Strike”

Co-written by the band, Proffer, and the mysterious H. Banger, a name that appears on six tracks and nowhere else. Ever. Believed to be a collective pseudonym representing members of Kick Axe, whose fingerprints are all over the Pasha Records era.

“Up here on this tightrope / Tryin’ not to fall / The spotlight is on me tonight / I want to have it all.”

It’s a metaphor for the rock life, hunger, exposure, the weight of wanting everything. The guitars duel, the drums explode, and Free prowls through the mix like a panther who’s just discovered the cage door’s open.

“Hunger”

Written by Kick Axe and Proffer.

“When I see what I want, I’m gonna take it / If it’s against some law, you can bet I’m gonna break it.”

The tempo drops, the groove thickens. Free’s voice walks the line between desire and desperation, the sound of ambition burning too hot to contain.

“Shadow Rider”

“Midnight is my time / I’m the Shadow Rider / I come from the other side.”

It’s the nocturnal anthem, the loner archetype on a chrome horse, riding between light and dark.

“I’ll stand beside you and take the blows” isn’t just a lyric; it’s a code of honor. The song rumbles like an engine idling in a back alley.

“Shake Up”

“You grew up on rock ’n’ roll / So why deny it now?”

This is the youth call, the defiant reminder that rock isn’t fashion, it’s DNA. It’s a fist-in-the-air track, bright and rallying. The message is simple: don’t outgrow what saved you.

“Attention”

“You just want attention, baby, that’s all.”

A riff built for smoke machines and strip lights. But listen closer, there’s bite in Free’s delivery. Sarcasm, empathy, truth. It’s a mirror held up to a scene that fed on validation. Every artist in L.A. wanted the same thing: to be seen, to be loved, to matter.

“Breakin’ Out”

“I’m breakin’ out, gonna make my stand…”

The liberation song, before anyone knew how literal it would become. Appice’s drums hit like battering rams. Free’s vocal swings from defiance to freedom, warrior to wounded bird.

“Tough Guys”

“Tough guys never cry…”

The façade song. What sounds like macho posturing becomes, in Free’s phrasing, heartbreak. The mask slips. The world tells men not to feel; what does it cost to fake it.

“Dancing With Desire”

“I’m losing control tonight…”

The silk thread between danger and devotion. The groove is sleek, the vocal magnetic. Desire becomes identity, the moment you stop pretending and start existing.

“Second Thoughts”

“I had it all planned, then I changed my mind…”

It’s the sound of someone questioning the script.

Behind the arena sheen, it’s a confession: the fear of choosing the wrong version of yourself. Free sings like someone tearing up a contract with fate.

“Piece of the Rock”

“We all want a piece of the rock…”

The closer. It’s ambition reimagined as reckoning. You can hear the disillusionment under the triumph, the realization that success and happiness rarely share the same stage. It ends not in celebration, but transcendence.

King Kobra never quite made it to the top. The songs were there, the image marketable, the talent undeniable. But the breaks never came. One more album, and the curtain fell.

Yet “Ready to Strike” remains, a document of promise, power, and prophecy. The record of a voice that burned too bright to be ordinary.

Mark Free sang like someone fighting for air. Marcie Free lived like someone who finally found it.

RIP.

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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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Is Rock Really Dead? Let’s Talk About It.

So, my Release Day playlist on Spotify one week was packed with tracks like “Who Said Rock N Roll Is Dead” by Crazy Lixx, “Rock N Roll Survivors” by Bonfire, and “Gods Of Rock N Roll” by Billy Morrison, Ozzy Osbourne, and Steve Stevens.

Then the next week it had “Rock And Roll Party Cowboy” from The Darkness. And my train of thought moves to “Rock And Roll Deserves To Die”, one of my favorite songs from em.

Naturally, it got me thinking about the ever-recurring debate:

Is rock actually dead?

Lenny Kravitz released a song titled “Rock and Roll Is Dead” on his 1995 album “Circus”, a cynical take on the state of rock music at the time.

Marilyn Manson, has a song “Rock Is Dead” from the 1998 album “Mechanical Animals” which is critical of the commercialization and his perceived decline of rock’s rebellious spirit.

L.A. Guns released a song titled “Rock and Roll Is Dead” on their 2005 album “Tales from the Strip”, about the genre’s struggles in the modern era.

Even The Doors’ had a track “Rock Is Dead” (recorded in 1969, released posthumously).

Gene Simmons is the guy most often quoted on this. In a 2022 statement, he told “Metal Hammer”, “I stand by my words, rock is dead and the fans killed it,” blaming file-sharing and the decline of record industry support for new rock talent. He also elaborated on this in a 2014 “Esquire” interview, pointing to the lack of new iconic bands since the Beatles era and the economic challenges for emerging artists.

However plenty of legacy artists share a similar sentiment.

Jay Jay French fromTwisted Sister had made a few forays into this. You can read his latest here.

He makes a good argument about rock’s decline in cultural relevance, essentially claiming that rock is “dead” because it no longer produces massive young stars like it did in the late ’60s and ’70s.

He also points out that rock doesn’t define youth identity in the way hip-hop, pop, and country do today. It’s a compelling argument, but it’s not the full picture.

So where does Jay Jay have a point.

Rock isn’t the dominant force in youth culture anymore. Streaming, social media, and internet-driven virality have helped hip-hop and pop thrive while rock has struggled to keep up.

Since exact weekly numbers aren’t available, I’ll estimate based on monthly listener counts and annual streams, dividing by 52 for a rough weekly average, adjusted for current trends.

The top 50 metal and rock artists generate 70-100M weekly streams. This is a fraction of the broader streaming landscape, where total weekly streams across all genres exceed 4-5 billion (based on Spotify’s 2023 global totals of 200B+ annual streams).

Pop/Hip-Hop genres account for 50-60% of streams. Their top 50 artists alone could hit 400-500M weekly, 4-5x higher than metal/rock.

Metal and rock, despite passionate fanbases, remain a smaller player in the streaming game, punching above their weight culturally but not numerically.

The days of four kids in a garage forming a band and becoming icons by 25 is way harder to pull off now. Labels and streaming platforms push polished, solo acts over traditional bands.

Just like jazz and big band had their golden eras before becoming niche genres, rock’s mainstream heyday as a youth movement may simply be over.

So where does Jay Jay’s argument fall short?

Sure, rock isn’t a monoculture anymore, but it’s alive and well in subgenres like metal, indie, punk, and prog. Just because it’s not topping the Billboard Hot 100 doesn’t mean it’s dead.

Even in those subgenres, there are further subgenres and even more splintering.

In Latin America, Japan, and Scandinavia, rock and metal are huge. Just because the major markets aren’t as tuned in doesn’t mean the genre is extinct.

Back in the day, you were either a rock and metal fan or a hip-hop fan.

Now?

A single playlist might have Metallica, Bon Jovi, Kendrick Lamar, Whitesnake, Shinedown, Taylor Swift, and Bring Me The Horizon. Genre loyalty is weaker than ever.

As much as the internet was meant to level the playing field and remove the gatekeepers, streaming algorithms and major labels still push what’s easy to market.

Rock isn’t dying; it’s just not the industry’s priority.

French isn’t wrong. Rock doesn’t dominate pop culture like it used to, and we’re unlikely to see another Beatles-level rock phenomenon.

But calling it “dead” is an oversimplification.

The genre is evolving, diversifying, and thriving in different ways. It might never reclaim its past mainstream dominance, but it’s far from irrelevant.

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Music, My Stories

Iron Maiden – Live At Qudos Bank Arena, Sydney – 13 September 2024

A proud moment.

2016: My son’s first Iron Maiden concert, “The Book of Souls” tour.

2024: Eight years later, here we are again for “The Days of Future Past” tour.

Of course, we had to buy some merch, again.

And, of course, I had to buy some beers for myself and this time I had the older two riding shotgun. Naturally, this led to the classic “Are you buying alcohol for underage kids?” interrogation.

“Yes, officer, I like to live on the edge, by getting kicked out of an Iron Maiden show before it even starts.”

And let’s not forget the food situation. Kids are always hungry, and I just love paying hundreds of dollars for substandard, borderline offensive stadium meals. But hey, who cares? We weren’t there for the cuisine.

We were there for Maiden.

Iron Maiden’s opening bands don’t get much love in Australia. I remember “Behind Crimson Eyes” getting brutally booed at the “Caught Somewhere Back in Time”Sydney show. But to their credit, they powered through, then covered “Ace of Spades” and just like that, the crowd that wanted them gone was suddenly on their side.

This time, we had Killswitch Engage. Thanks to a heroic battle with traffic and then another war at the merch stalls, I only caught the second half of their set. From what I saw, they were tight, and the crowd gave them a solid response. But everyone was here for one reason.

The ritual begins:

“Doctor Doctor” plays.

The lights go out.

Vangelis’ “Blade Runner” end title starts.

And then—“Caught Somewhere in Time” kicks in.

“Caught Somewhere in Time”

Great opener, but they should’ve played the intro before hitting the fast riff.

Then again, they do the same thing with “Aces High,” so I should’ve seen it coming.

“Stranger in a Strange Land”

A personal favorite. Adrian Smith’s solo is one of those “song within a song” moments. Magic.

“The Writing on the Wall”

Another Adrian masterpiece solo, reminiscent of “Stranger In A Strange Land”.

“Days of Future Past”

Easily one of the best tracks off Senjutsu.

And that verse riff? Adrian again. Starting to see a pattern?

“The Time Machine”

Would you go back in time if you could?

This song has a lot of great riffs, but that harmony section after the first verse stands out.

“The Prisoner”

Wasn’t that excited for this one, until I saw my kids getting into it. Then I had a moment of clarity: open up my mind and enjoy myself.

“Death of the Celts”

Basically Blood Brothers Pt. 2. And I’m 100% okay with that.

“Can I Play With Madness?”

Or as Bruce calls it live: “Can I Play With Agnes?” Apparently, she never answers. Yeah I know, it’s a bad joke.

“Heaven Can Wait”

Wo-oh-oh. Enough said.

“Alexander the Great”

This was the reason I had to be here.

When I dubbed “Somewhere in Time” to cassette, I needed it to fit on a 45-minute side. If I followed the proper tracklist, I’d lose two minutes of “Alexander the Great”.

Unacceptable.

So I recorded Side 2 first, then Side 1, sacrificing part of “Heaven Can Wait” instead. I still got the “woh-oh-ohs’.

“Fear of the Dark”

The crowd sings the leads like it’s “Livin’ on a Prayer”.

“Iron Maiden”

Played at such ridiculous speed, even the term “speed metal” feels inadequate.

“Hell on Earth”

They basically turned the venue into a furnace with all the fire.

But that intro’s clean-tone lead?

Give me a sword and shield, I’m ready for battle.

“The Trooper”

No surprise here. It’s practically a legal requirement for every Maiden setlist.

“Wasted Years”

A perfect closer.

That intro? Instant immortality. Also… yes, I’m a full-blown Adrian Smith fanboy.

No shame.

And then, just like that, it was over.

Who knew this would be Nicko’s last tour behind the kit?

One of the greatest drummers in heavy metal and he did it all with one kick pedal and rock-solid technique.

Another Iron Maiden show in the books. Another legendary night. Another pile of money spent.

Worth every cent.

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A to Z of Making It, Copyright, Influenced, Music, Unsung Heroes

Derek Schulman

On October 15, 2020, Derek Schulman appeared on the Bob Lefsetz Podcast.

I first heard of Schulman as the guy responsible for signing Bon Jovi and Cinderella. But before becoming a label executive, he was a member of Gentle Giant (GG), a band that has a bigger fan base today than when they originally broke up.

When Lefsetz asked why GG had grown in popularity, Schulman explained: “We wrote music for ourselves, didn’t follow trends, and the music held up.” Interestingly, GG never considered themselves a progressive rock band. Rock, yes, but not prog. They simply pushed themselves musically.

I believe GG’s resurgence is largely due to the internet. Their music isn’t locked away in a vault, it’s widely accessible. If we were still in the pre-Napster era, their catalog might have remained buried, since labels wouldn’t see the financial incentive to print CDs. Labels have always believed they know what fans want, but they’ve often been wrong. Had they continued releasing hard rock in the ’90s, the genre could have still produced acts selling close to 500,000 units. Instead, they abandoned it.

It always comes back to the music. People return for the music, not for record sales, labels, executives, or streaming numbers.

From Musician to Executive

Before Gentle Giant, Schulman played in a band with a few hit singles, but by 1969, he was burned out from the pressure to keep churning out commercial hits. He wanted to form a band that was the opposite of pop, so GG was born.

But by 1980, after 14 years in bands, Schulman was done. GG had become a job, and he had lost enthusiasm for recording and touring. With nothing lined up, he spent a year feeling lost. Fortunately, he had savings, thanks to his role as GG’s quasi-manager in the mid-’70s.

A friend at PolyGram called with a job offer. Schulman moved from California to New York and joined the label as a Promotions/A&R rep, though his role was mostly promotions. He was hired because two of PolyGram’s heads of radio promotion were huge Gentle Giant fans.

At the time, PolyGram was a mess. The label had major acts like KISS and Def Leppard, but they drained a lot of resources. Schulman’s break came when artists and managers started bringing him albums. Uriah Heep was shopping a new record, and Schulman helped organize a deal to release it.

Then came Bon Jovi.

Bon Jovi’s Breakthrough

Schulman met Jon Bon Jovi and was impressed by his focus and drive. Jon wanted to be bigger than Elvis. He even introduced Schulman to his parents, who told him: “Take care of our son.”

At the time, no other labels were bidding on Bon Jovi. Schulman also had a strict policy, he refused to get into bidding wars.

The key move was bringing in Doc McGhee. Doc originally came to Schulman’s office pushing Pat Travers, but Schulman told him to check out Bon Jovi instead. Schulman saw in Doc the same relentless drive that Jon had.

Jon met Doc, they struck a deal, and just like with Schulman, Jon’s parents needed to approve.

McGhee put Bon Jovi on tour with Ratt and Scorpions. Their debut album was a success, but their second record, “7800° Fahrenheit”, was considered a sophomore slump. Schulman hated the album title, the recording process was a mess, and the overall vibe felt off. But the album did its job, it kept the band on the road while McGhee worked overtime to book shows.

Schulman, meanwhile, had started working with producers Bob Rock and Bruce Fairbairn, who had just finished albums with Loverboy and Honeymoon Suite. Jon and Doc knew they needed great producers to reach the next level.

Schulman suggested co-writing with others. Paul Stanley and Gene Simmons had already introduced Jon to Desmond Child. The rest is history.

The label knew they had something big as soon as “Slippery When Wet” was mastered. The original album cover was scrapped, and Jon designed the new one himself. “You Give Love a Bad Name” and “Livin’ on a Prayer” were immediate hits, and the album shot to No. 1. Schulman had a percentage point on the album, but when he left the label, his royalties ended.

Cinderella

Schulman was introduced to Cinderella by an agent, a lawyer, and Jon Bon Jovi, who knew Tom Keifer.

He went to see them play a club in Philadelphia. The band wasn’t great, Tom Keifer stood out, Jeff LaBar was solid on guitar, but the other two members weren’t up to par. Then Schulman listened to a 90-song demo of Keifer’s original material. He was blown away by Keifer’s songwriting.

Schulman told the lawyer: “Get Tom to replace the other two with better musicians, and I’ll give you a deal.”

Andy Johns was brought in to produce “Night Songs”. The album dropped shortly after “Slippery When Wet” exploded, and “Night Songs” shot into the Top 10. Suddenly, Schulman was on fire, he had two bands in the Top 10.

When Lefsetz asked why Cinderella never released another big album, Schulman pointed out that they did, “Long Cold Winter”, but he had briefly forgotten the title.

Tom Keifer eventually lost his voice, which Schulman confirmed was true. Schulman also helped shape Cinderella’s albums with his artist experience, though he didn’t contribute to Bon Jovi’s records in the same way. He even co-wrote songs with Tom but never took credit.

Dream Theater

Derek Oliver, an A&R representative at Atco Records and a passionate fan of progressive rock, was the key figure in discovering Dream Theater.

In the late 1980s, Dream Theater had self-released their debut album, “When Dream and Day Unite”, through Mechanic/MCA Records, but the album failed to gain much traction due to poor promotion and distribution.

Meanwhile, Oliver, who had interviewed and reviewed the band during the period as part of Kerrang was impressed by their technical proficiency and songwriting.

Recognizing their potential, he brought Dream Theater to the attention of Derek Schulman, the head of Atco Records at the time.

After meeting the band and seeing their dedication, Schulman agreed to sign them to Atco. Under his guidance, Dream Theater recorded their breakthrough album, Images and Words (1992), which featured the hit single “Pull Me Under.” The album’s success helped establish them as a leading force in progressive metal, proving that Schulman and Oliver’s instincts were right.

Running Labels

Schulman also played a key role in launching Bob Rock’s production career, giving him his first gig with Kingdom Come, another band that went on to dominate the charts.

In 1989, Schulman left PolyGram to run Atco Records. PolyGram wanted to keep him, offering him control of Vertigo and Mercury, but he wanted a change, even if it meant losing his Bon Jovi and Cinderella royalties.

Doug Morris was hesitant about Schulman at first and saw him as a potential replacement. But Schulman built an impressive roster, signing Pantera and The Rembrandts. He had actually planned to sign Pantera to PolyGram but knew he was leaving, so he told their attorney to wait until he moved to Atco.

At first, Atco thrived. Schulman put together a strong team, and the first three years were fantastic. But eventually, he started losing perspective. One day, he heard a No. 1 song on the radio and liked it. When he asked a work colleague who had signed the artist, they said: “You did.” That moment shook him.

Doug wanted him out, but Schulman quit. He even attempted a coup while on a trip to Russia.

Roadrunner Records and the Rise of Metal

Schulman took a break before getting a call from an old friend, Case Wessels, at Roadrunner Records. Initially consulting for a year, he eventually became president.

Roadrunner was independent, which Schulman loved—no board to answer to. He scrapped some of Wessels’ ideas and focused on breaking bands like Coal Chamber and Fear Factory, both signed by Monte Conner.

Then he saw Slipknot live and knew they would be massive.

He also signed Nickelback. Their first album (with Roadrunner) featuring “Leader of Men”, got some airplay, but when “Silver Side Up” dropped, Schulman immediately recognized its potential. The moment he heard “How You Remind Me”, he knew it would be huge.

Roadrunner was suddenly rolling in cash. Wessels wanted another “Silver Side Up”, but Schulman knew those albums don’t appear every six months, more like every 5 to 10 years.

Lefsetz asked why Nickelback gets so much hate. Schulman believes they’re a guilty pleasure, many people who claim to hate them secretly enjoy their music.

Finally, Schulman pointed out that while the industry panicked over piracy during Napster, hip-hop thrived by giving music away for free.

When streaming took over, hip-hop was already dominant—and it still is.

If you like your hard rock and metal history, then Derek Schulman is an unsung hero and this podcast is one to listen to.

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A to Z of Making It, Classic Songs to Be Discovered, Derivative Works, Influenced, Music

The Case For “Unmasked”

Gene Simmons hated it.

Paul Stanley called it wimpy.

Ace Frehley didn’t get the memo that the album was meant to be a pop rock album.

Peter Criss, well he just didn’t participate.

And I was confused why Paul Stanley didn’t use Desmond Child again, since their hit from “Dynasty” was co-written with him.

Instead Vini Poncia, who produced the album, co-wrote most of the tracks.

In case you are confused, I’m writing about “Unmasked” released in 1980.

It didn’t meet commercial expectations in the North American market however it did very good business in Northern Europe.

And in Australia, it sold more than 110,000 copies on the first day of its release and 3,000 more were stolen from a truck on the way to stores. Well, this is according to the Sydney Morning Herald.

You see “Kissmania” or “Kissteria” in Australia was about 4 years behind their U.S. peak.

It didn’t sound like past Kiss, but this record definitely gave the power pop / melodic rock scene a good kick in the ass. You had bands like The Raspberries and Small Faces, but suddenly you could mention Kiss in the same sentence.

Its influence on the Scandinavian market is large and it’s no surprise that a lot of melodic pop and rock artists and songwriters have come from these markets.

Is That You?

The opening track and it’s not even written by a Kiss member.

But it is the parent to “Lick It Up”.

Listen to the verse riffs in both. The feel and groove is the same. The layered backing vocals are also great, something which Def Leppard mastered with Mutt Lange.

And Stanley always challenged himself vocally, the falsettos on the pre-chorus are braver than the ball tearers on “I Was Made Lovin You”.

On a side note, as a solo artist, McMahon’s 15 minutes of fame came with “Cry Little Sister” from “The Lost Boys” movie, 7 years later.

Shandi

Australia was also going through a “disco ABBA mania craze”, so it’s no surprise that a crossover disco/rock pop ballad went huge here.

And if ABBA wasnt doing music like this anymore, fans would always look to others to fill the void.

If you want to hear what inspired it, press play on the song “Tomorrow” from Joe Walsh. Paul basically lifted the first 60 seconds from it. And Joe Walsh is far from wimpy.

Talk To Me

Ace steps up with a rocker, which did good business as a single in Switzerland, Germany, Netherlands and Australia.

It has an intro riff that sounds like it was influenced by Rick Springfield’s “Jessie’s Girl”.

The major key riffage in the Chorus reminds me of “Do Ya” from ELO.

Naked City

My favorite song on the album and one of Gene Simmons best, giving melodic rock music some grit.

It’s written by a committee involving Simmons, Poncia, Bob Kulick and Peppy Castro.

Ace even contributed a solo, while Anton Fig and Bob Kulick did the drums and guitars.

But it all started with Bob Kulick who had the guitar riff and he demoed the song with Peppy Castro.

But the final recorded version didn’t make Bob happy and he has said that “Kiss ruined “Naked City”.

Ruined or not, it’s my favorite. And if the demo is available anywhere, please share it.

What Makes The World Go Round

I always like it when artists take influences from different styles of music.

In this case, Paul is taking inspiration from soul act, The Spinners and fusing hard rock, pop, soul and R&B into a unique style that still sounds like a rock song.

How good is the Chorus?

Tomorrow

My second favorite.

The power pop of 2000’s acts like Wheatus, Good Charlotte and the like is right here.

It might sound light on the rock, but inside the song you’ll hear a feel and vibe from “Coming Home”.

It’s also influenced by “Tonight” from The Raspberries along with Rick Springfield.

And even the most hardened rocker cannot resist singing along to the Chorus.

Two Sides Of The Coin

More ELO meets Free from the Spaceman.

I forgot to mention on “Talk To Me” that Ace employs an Open G tuning, a tuning popular with slide players because with one finger they can play a chord instead of fretting the chord. He also employs this Open G tuning here.

Keith Richards was a well known user of this tuning, however many believed that Keith used this tuning because of how wasted he was. It’s easier to play with one finger than four. And that same view point was held for Ace, however if you look at interviews during this period you cannot see or hear Ace sounding wasted.

The lyrics are dumb but then again Kiss weren’t scholars when it came to lyrics, so that’s what makes their music fun.

She’s So European

Press play for the intro. That’s all you need to listen to here.

Then again Gene Simmons does a good job on the lyrics and melodies as well, about a girl with a glass of pink champagne and well you can read the rest.

Easy As It Seems

Another favorite.

Paul is the star of the song. His bass riff is sinister, yet groovy and his sense of melody elevates the track.

I’m also a fan of The Pretenders and it looks like Paul was influenced by them as their song “Mystery Achievement” came out in January, 1980 and Kiss released their album in May 1980.

Check em out, they are both great songs.

Torpedo Girl

Press play for that rhythm and blues swing drum groove and stick around to hear Ace summon Joe Walsh for the verse riff and The Beach Boys for the Chorus.

You’re All That I Want

It has that feel of early Kiss musically. And somehow it gets no love.

The Wrap Up

They didn’t tour the North American market, but they did hit Europe, Australia and New Zealand. It kept em in business.

On Australian TV they also got a lot of press and interviews.

They appeared on the Australian “60 Minutes”. The segment is on YouTube if you want to see it. Bill Aucion was also interviewed, telling the interviewer how Kiss was turning over $120 million a year, and how he was looking to get the band into movies and comic books.

We sort of know how that turned out with “The Elder”.

A few things to note for 1980.

AC/DC dropped “Back In Black”, a slab of hard and bluesy rock that proved you can be commercially successful during this period playing that style of music.

The NWOBHM was also gaining momentum. This was even harder sounding and more abrasive than AC/DC and it also had an audience that was growing.

Most of the acts who had success in the 70s were either broken up, or on their last legs with the original members and looking to bring in new members.

So I understand the “wimpy” and “not sound like Kiss” comments, but this album has aged well because so many of the songs are so well written.

For a band that was just not functioning anymore they still found a way to deliver a great album.

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