2024 release from the British AOR band. In 2007 - after a 12 year sabbatical - FM were persuaded to return to the stage for a 'one-off' headline performance at a sold-out Firefest IV at Nottingham Rock City. FM haven't stopped since… 2024 sees FM celebrate their 40th Anniversary with the release of the band's fourteenth studio album OLD HABITS DIE HARD. Vocalist, guitarist and founding member Steve Overland says, “the new album encompasses the best melodic elements of the band’s illustrious 40-year spanning career. We really looked at what made the most popular FM albums great and tried to focus on that,” says Steve about the new album Old Habits Die Hard."

Lithuanian-born Swedish artist Michael Palace is announcing today another chapter in the PALACE saga, his new record “Reckless Heart”, out on July 12th via Frontiers Music Srl. This explosive musical journey resurrects the essence of the 1980s, each track pulsating with the potential to score a classic action blockbuster or drive the adrenaline of a training montage. “It was time to go back to the roots, as they say, and finally make that true '80s AOR album that I’ve dreamt of creating since I started PALACE. It's the missing link between 1985 and 2024,” said Michael.

Long lost collaboration by Glenn Hughes and Robin George, originally recorded in 1989. Mastered from the original tapes.

After spending the better half of the '70s as an ersatz prog band given to Neal Schon's noodling, never-ending solos, low record sales, and muddling about on the marginal rock circuit, the members of Journey certainly welcomed the phenomenal chart success and arena tours that came their way in the late '70s. With Captured, a live double-disc from 1980, the newly crowned kings of AOR show off like a formerly fat girl at prom. "Separate Ways" and "Faithfully" were still a few years away, but the band had plenty of hits by this time and they blast through them all, including a blistering version of "Any Way You Want It." The band are in rare form and vocalist Steve Perry uses Captured as his coming out, while the thousands of diehards sweating in the blistering sun give the album an underlying hum of energy that tops even Perry's.

Escape was a groundbreaking album for San Francisco's Journey, charting three singles inside Billboard's Top Ten, with "Don't Stop Believing" reaching number nine, "Who's Crying Now" number four, and "Open Arms" peaking at number two and holding there for six weeks. Escape flung Journey steadfastly into the AOR arena, combining Neal Schon's grand yet palatable guitar playing with Jonathan Cain's blatant keyboards. All this was topped off by the passionate, wide-ranged vocals of Steve Perry, who is the true lifeblood of this album, and this band. The songs on Escape are more rock-flavored, with more hooks and a harder cadence compared to their former sound. "Who's Crying Now" spotlights the sweeping fervor of Perry's voice, whose theme about the ups and downs of a relationship was plentiful in Journey's repertoire…

The third and final album of what could be called Journey's cocoon phase (Escape would give birth to a fully formed butterfly and put the band through the stratosphere), 1980's Departure would also be the quintet's last with keyboardist/vocalist Gregg Rolie. Produced by Geoff Workman and Kevin Elson (essentially both engineers turned producers), the album continued to build on the band's previous two recordings, but offered an added edge, arrangement-wise. This was likely due to the fact that the band had walked into Automatt Studios with 19 new tunes and proceeded to record most of them live, eventually trimming down to 11 songs. Catapulted all the way up to number eight on the Billboard Top 200, Departure was the band's highest charting album to date and got off to an explosive start with the driving riffs and chorused vocals of "Anyway You Want It"…

With the platinum triumph of Infinity still ringing in their ears like coins in a slot machine, Journey was now committed to completing their transformation from jazz fusion/prog rock mavens into arena rock superstars with their fifth album, 1979's Evolution. This transition (also clearly illustrated by the futuristic insect gracing each album cover henceforth) would not come without its growing pains, however, and while producer Roy Thomas Baker was back for a second go-round, original drummer Aynsley Dunbar would be the first casualty of the band's new direction. Thankfully, former Ronnie Montrose skin-beater Steve Smith soon brought his college-trained jazz fusion background to the table, and the band was ready to get back to work…