Kev Rowland
Lioncage was formed in Germany in 2013 by Thorsten Bertermann (vocals), Torsten Landsberger (drums) and Lars König (guitar & mix), their debut ‘Done At Last’ was released two years later with this one two years after that. Although the trio has a variety of individual musical influences they have one passion in common, melodic rock and bands such as Toto, Foreigner, Journey, Huey Lewis, Genesis, Yes, Paul Carrack, Chicago and many more. They brought in some guests to help them with this album, with bass by Lars Slowak, Sven Zimmermann, Andreas Laude-Schwedewsky and Dirk Meyer, keyboards by Mitch Knauer and Shanger Ohl, and backing vocals by Madeleine Lang, Anja Bublitz, Olaf Senkbeil and Billy King. Tim Pierce, (Bruce Springsteen, Michael Jackson, Rascal Flatts, Joe Cocker, Rick Springfield, Elton John etc.) provided some guitar parts on the track “Secrets”.
They have taken their passions and managed to combine many of them in just one record, with Journey and Toto being the most obvious, and it is as if grunge and hair metal never took place as when listening to this it is the late Seventies again. Somehow, they manage to stay just the right side of overpowering production and flimsy guitars, and throw in some good harmony vocals and melodies that make this an interesting album to listen to. If you enjoy melodic hard rock with an AOR feeling to it then this may well be of interest.