When someone like Gene Simmons gets involved in a band, you can be sure of a number of things: it rocks, it has quality, and he is pretty sure he makes some extra bucks 😉
Well, I am not sure about the money, but the first album by the mighty House Of Lords sure qualifies in the other aspects. Fronted by the powerhouse vocalist James Christian, and with a band that is a kind of who´s who (a lot of attorneys involved gives that away), keyboard wizard Greg Giuffria, Ken Mary on drums, Chuck Wright on bass and Lanny Cordola on guitars. The band not only wrote songs themselves, but also secured tracks and or help from Stan Bush, David Glen Eisley, and Rick Nielsen to name a few.
Style wise this is hard rock with many pomp features. Not a big surprise with Giuffria present. All this melted into an album that hits home hard. Be it with ballad like stuff, rockers, or mid tempo pieces, this is music with grandeur and impact. Pleasure Palace builds up slowly, I Wanna Be Loved rocks, Edge Of Your Life starts as a ballad, before turning into a monster chorus and powers up quite big. Looking For Strange, with it´s quirky boogie piano intro, is another up tempo rocker and Love Don´t Lie is the power ballad we all know (either from this, or from another rendition). More rockers follow and also my personal favourite Under Blue Skies, to give us another timeless album every home should own. Great stuff and like I mentioned in my post of Cartesian Dreams, this is music I never get tired of.