AOR ANTHEMS FROM FRONTIER RECORDS
There are many iconic Metal record companies out there: Nuclear Blast, Roardrunner, Metal Blade, Music For Nations, Earache, ... The list is long, especially if you start including all of the legendary underground labels that have collapsed over time. Some labels have been tied to specific underground genres (like Peaceville Records who would be the catalyst of Doom-Metal in the early 90s). So, what makes Frontiers Records special? After all, compared to some of the above-mentioned labels, Frontiers' roster isn't stacked with very heavy bands...
Since it was founded in the late 90's by Serafino Perugino, the Italian record label has become synonymous with quality AOR. For the Black Metal fans scratching their head right now: AOR stands for Adult Oriented Rock or melodic Hard/Classic Rock.
Many of the genre's greats of the 70s and 80s found a new home with Frontiers, like Whitesnake, Toto, Uriah Heep, or Y&T on this playlist. The label has also signed many younger bands, ranging from Pop Rock, over Glam Metal to full blown Power Metal. But what has become the label's secret – and successful – sauce are the many projects Serafino and his team come up with where multiple established artists are teamed up to create – often one-off – collaborative albums.
It may be fair to state that the quality of all these Supergroup collaborations has not been able to keep up with the velocity that these albums have been released. Many of these projects did not continue as live acts, causing more than one cynic to label the projects as money-grabbing fabrications. That being said, as long as this approach enables amazing projects like Pride Of Lions (centered around Survivor's Jim Peterik and vocalist Toby Hitchcock), Revolution Saints (featuring Whitesnake's Doug Aldrich, Journey's Deen Castronovo, and Night Ranger's Jack Blades) or the many collaborations featuring world-class singers Jeff Scott Soto or Joe Lynn Turner (Sunstorm on this playlist), who are we really to complain? Clearly there is a healthy market for AOR, and Frontiers Records will happily continue to provide adequate supply!
Nowadays, the Frontiers has grown beyond justbeing a record label, as it now also hosts the Frontiers Rock Festival. Withmany releases each year from an impressive roster of bands, it's hard tocompile a playlist that captures all the facets of the record company, so forthis playlist we focus on some of the biggest hits the company has produced(not including any covers), starting with Pride Of Lion's breakthrough anthem 'It's Criminal' to the supergroup around Japanese virtuoso Nozomu Wakai: Destinia(featuring heavyweights like Ronnie Romero, Marco Mendoza, and Tommy Aldridge).
Playlist:
01. Pride Of Lions: It's Criminal (2003)
02. Jeff Scott Soto: Believe In Me (2006)
03. Y & T: I'm Coming Home (2010)
04. Crashdiet: Generation Wild (2010)
05. Mr. Big: Undertow (2011)
06. Eclipse: Wake Me Up (2012)
07. Hardline: Fever Dreams (2012)
08. Stryper: No More Hell To Pay (2013)
09. Timo Tolkki's Avalon: Enshrined In My Memory (2013)
10. W.E.T.: Learn To Live Again (2013)
11. Night Ranger: High Road (2014)
12. Winger: Rat Race (2014)
13. Revolution Saints: Back On My Trail (2015)
14. Sunstorm: Edge Of Tomorrow (2016)
15. One Desire: Hurt (2017)
16. Crazy Lixx: Hunter Of The Heart (2017)
17. Impellitteri: Run For Your Life (2018)
18. Destinia: Metal Souls (2018)
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Metal --- part 2
Non-ficțiuneContinuing the History of Metal through short (trivia packed) chapters and accompanying playlists. Thanks for all the support of Part 1 of these ongoing series! You asked me for more, here it is :) Work in progress, will be posting irregularly (but...
