It’s hard to adequately explain just how exciting the opening track on Krokus legend Marc Storace‘s new solo album, Crossfire, is. As it crackles out of the speakers you’ll be transported instantly to 1984 and the Swiss band’s last stab at the big time, The Blitz… For many hardcore fans the album was an over-glossy, airbrushed disappointment, but for this young pup it was an album of immense importance at the time and Screaming Demon, the track from Crossfire we’re talking about now, sounds for all the world like it could so easily have been spawned during the writing sessions for The Blitz…

Sadly, but perhaps inevitably, the rest of the album doesn’t quite capture the lightning of the eighties quite so effectively, although the superb Thrill And A Kiss, with it’s goosebump-inducing chorus and serpentine slither comes very close. These two tracks alone are worth the price of admission, and I have to admit that, after calming down and re-calibrating my expectations after that opening track, there is an awful lot to enjoy across the rest of the album if undemanding, good-time rock n’roll is your bag.

Storace himself is an absolute revelation; He literally sounds not a minute older than he did when he was screaming in the night all those years ago, and his classy pipes transform even relatively ordinary fare like We All Need The Money and Hell Yeah into rabble-rousing party starters.

Produced by man of the moment Tommy Henriksen, who is just about to blow the joint up with his own Crossbone Skully project, Crossfire is an album that leaves no stone unturned in it’s quest to get the listener out of their seat and into a state of fervid, party-hardy recklessness. That’s some feat when you consider the man’s target audience are all, shall we say, of a ‘certain’ age, but it’s hard to resist the call of the Sirens… You have been warned… knee braces and Voltarin at the ready… NOW LET’S ROCK!!

Crossfire releases on November 22nd.