You are now imagining / remembering the classic melodic Rock revolution of the 1980s. A long lost age when SURVIVOR, FOREIGNER and JOURNEY ruled the earth, along with their tales of everything vaguely related to love. PRIDE OF LIONS is the direct descendant of these three bands.

The first song on the album "Immortal" is a powerful statement of intent about how AOR will never die, I agree, it's far too commercially viable to die. While the first song is catchy, powerful and the riffs are actually pretty damn heavy, the second song is total commercial Rock standard fare; elevated from mediocrity only because of Hitchcock's amazing voice. Despite this it needs to be said that the lyrics in this album are a huge step forward from the normal heartbroken love ballads of the 80s.

The instrumentalism in this album is actually rather good. The riffs are original and deceptively heavy, you can really feel the implicit metal influences inside the songs. The drums are fairly pedestrian but this is all it needs to be and they do push forward the music, in fact the rhythm is seriously tight. The solos are actually excellent, loads of feeling and mix it with speed.

If you are a hardcore melodic Rock fan you will have already noticed that Jim Peterson, a member of the giants, SURVIVOR is a member of the band. Peterson said that; "PRIDE OF LIONSis my vision of the best elements of the great melodic Rockera of the 80s, updated of course with moremodern production sounds". I think it's safe to say that the last half of the mission statement has been completed; the production in this album is fantastic. All the instruments come through crystal clear, though a little bit flat but that's just nitpicking.

This album is exactly what you expect from a great commercial Rock album; but better. Putting all the ingredients of a good Commercial Rock album together does not make a good album, it usually makes you sound like BON JOVI. Without a certain degree of originality it is soulless and PRIDE OF LIONS has this originality in spades, that's what makes this album good.