The first three Honeymoon Suite albums are an essential part of any decent melodic rock/AOR album collection. Songs like ‘New Girl Now’, ‘Feel It Again’, ‘Bad Attitude’ and ‘Lookin’ Out For Number One’ should have made them as big as Journey and Survivor, but outside of the US and Canada, the band never achieved any more than cult status. Any relative lack of success elsewhere wasn’t for the want of trying, however. Millions of people have actually heard Honeymoon Suite without realising it, since their ‘Lethal Weapon’ graced the end credits of the film of the same name in 1987. Unfortunately, the end credits failed to mention this…robbing the band of some very easy publicity.
Tag Archives: frontiers records
GRAND – Second To None
Grand’s debut album was one of the best AOR albums of 2022. Seemingly out of nowhere, the Swedish band dropped a record that encapsulated some of the very best sounds from an unfashionable genre. The songs shared strong influences from the likes of Work of Art and Lionville, but with the help from a dash of pop and some absolutely killer choruses, Grand made a well worn style feel a little perkier than most.
GOTUS – Gotus
Gotus? In terms of band names, that’s pretty ugly. It certainly isn’t terrible – that would be reserved for the likes of Smoking Gives You Big Tits, Dohny Jepp, and Fuck Yeah Dinosaurs, all of which not only have the misfortune to exist, but also the distinction of somehow being better than anything else those bands could come up with – but it certainly doesn’t inspire. It was chosen with solid reasoning, however: it’s a portmanteau designed to advertise the fact that this European supergroup features members of Gotthard and Krokus. That should be enough alone to secure the melodic rockers a decent audience, but in many ways, the biggest draw here is their choice of vocalist.
SEVENTH CRYSTAL – Infinity EP
On their second studio album, ‘Wonderland’ (released in March 2023), Swedish rockers Seventh Crystal delivered some enjoyable melodic hard rock tunes. In the title track, especially, listeners were treated to some well crafted, slightly old fashioned riffs that advertised the musicians’ talents with a decent amount of punch. On that track, the energies of the New Wave of British Heavy Metal could be heard lurking beneath a big sound calling back to American melodic rock acts of the late 80s in the best possible way. It was when tackling smoother sounds that Seventh Crystal really excelled, though, and ‘Million Times’ shared some great harmony driven AOR, loaded with soaring melodies; the classic sounding balladry at the heart of ‘In The Mirror’ showcased a strong vocal from frontman Kristian Fyhr, and the perky ‘Next Generation’ peppered some finely played melodic rock riffs with a poppier core, showing how the band weren’t afraid of mixing things up just a little.
KINGS CROWN – Closer To The Truth
The name Martin Kronlund will be familiar to many melodic rock fans. Between 2010 and 2015, the Swedish guitarist almost seemed omnipresent. Throughout that time, he was a member of Lover Under Cover, Salute and the reformed White Wolf. He was also a guest on the Ged Rylands all-star project Rage of Angels. In addition, he provided technical/production duties on albums by Departure, Ilium, M.ILL.ION, Saracen and Elevener. For a time it was hard to get away from the bugger.