| ON THE ROCKS 'On the rocks' (INDEPENDENT) ON THE ROCKS is coming out of Bloomsburg, PA, USA and their debut CD contains 10 tracks. Musically the band is a mixture between BOSTON and HEART. BOSTON because of the melodic guitar sound of Buggsy Rock and HEART because of the female lead vocals of Colleen Matyas. The CD opens with "As soon as it began", a classy early 80s sounding AOR rocker with a great hookline too! Also the following track "Cry 4 love" is pretty good up tempo AOR rock in a typical female fronted rock style of the early 80s. "The happy song" is an o.k. rocker, but nothing that special. "Crazy" is the only song that features the male lead vocals of Buggsy Derr and the chorus is very melodic and AOR oriented. "Vagrant" follows and starts pretty slow as a nice melodic ballad. The chorus of this song is not so strong, but towards the end the song becomes an uplifting rocker (kinda like BOSTON). The next two tracks are both 90s inspired. Still a song like "You don't feel the pain" has a nice melodic chorus. But the best songs on this CD can be found at the end of the CD. "Been so long" is a lovely early 80s AOR rocker. Closing track "Out in the night" is the best song of the whole CD. This is classy 80s AOR/Melodic Pomprock with a superb chorus and great keys. It sounds like a cross between HEART, JET and BOSTON. This ON THE ROCKS is sounding pretty good and if you like that good old 80s typed female fronted AOR, I'll bet you're gonna love this CD. Rating: 8/10 THE BUGGSY ROCK PROJECT' (INDEPENDENT) THE BUGGSY ROCK PROJECT is the project of guitarist/bassist/vocalist Buggsy Rock, who also appeared on the above reviewed ON THE ROCKS. Musically it is very different from ON THE ROCKS, because The BUGGSY ROCK PROJECT has many various music styles.One of the guest musicians on the album is Rusty (Toyte) Foulke who while with AOR/Pomprockers HYBRID ICE wrote the AOR song "Magdeline" for the latest BOSTON album. Rusty appears on only one song and surprisingly this is the best song of the album and also the only AOR oriented track. That song is called "Worlds on fire", a good semi AOR ballad with great lead vocals by Scott Adams. The rest of the CD is totally different from each other. Opener "Teetsie ants" for example is a RATT/FASTWAY/GREAT WHITE type partyrocker. This track features the lead vocals of John (LLOYD) Kistner lead vocalist of the legendary Harpo.Two more songs are notable, namely "It's not fair" (nice ballad with good harmonies) and "All alone" (nice melodic poprocker). But I have to say that this project is hard to place in one genre. If you want to hear all kinds of musicstyles, you might want to check this out. Rating: 7/10 |
| Listen to a few cuts from On theRocks and The Buggsy Rock Project! |
| Worlds on Fire |
| The Buggsy Rock Project! |
As soon as it began On the Rocks
Been so long On the Rocks
Teetsie Ants The Buggsy Rock Project