Label: Metalville Records
Release date: July 31, 2020
Production: Steve Mann
Album length: 54.09 min
Genre: AOR/Heavy Metal
Rating: 9.0/10
Lionheart are back at the end of this July, with the sun in Leo, and a new studio album. You can’t get much more lionhearted than that. Okay, who are Lionheart? For those of you who are actually reading this review, here’s a very quick rundown. First off, don’t confuse them with the ‘metalcore’ lot of the same name. This Lionheart is the old AOR/melodic rock and heavy metal outfit from the first half of the eighties. After one excellent and only album, released in the mid-eighties (“Hot Tonight,” 1984), Lionheart fell apart, and the seasoned members of the quintet spent the time until their reactivation in various bands like MSG, Praying Mantis, … We can also add that Dennis Stratton played in Iron Maiden before Lionheart and recorded their debut studio album with them in 1980. Anyway. With their comeback album “Second Nature” in 2017, Lionheart delivered a truly top-notch AOR/melodic heavy metal record, a brilliant reflection of the eighties and a very successful blend of that era’s big sound with modern studio production tricks.
“The Reality Of Miracles” was made under considerable time pressure, mostly because of Steve Mann’s obligations with MSG, and also because this past March it got shrouded in the black veil of the pandemic. Still, the guys managed to wrap up an album with a whopping thirteen tracks, intro included, which means twelve proper songs. Like its predecessor, this one was recorded in Mann’s Flying Vivaldi studio in the middle of Hanover, Germany. It speaks to you with exactly the same production.
Lionheart are the British answer to a crossbreed of heavy metal and the rhetoric of eighties pop music. An album like “The Reality Of Miralces” is something bands with a younger ID number, trying to play the AOR revivalism card today, find very hard to pull off. There’s definitely a chance, but it’s brutally difficult to catch. The members of the quintet are seasoned old cats who breathed the eighties in and out, up and down. Their multi-vocal choir harmonies in particular run beautifully, a kind of reflection of what The Sweet, Uriah Heep and Queen were doing in the seventies, and which later rubbed off on bands like Airrace and/or Praying Mantis alongside Lionheart. So now you’ve got a feel for what “The Reality of Miralces” offers, a very successful addition to its excellent and hard-to-match predecessor “Second Nature” (2017).
So is “The Reality Of Miracles” missing anything at all? AOR fans will be thrilled once again. The mix of rustling synth curtains, punchy and majestic guitar phrases, puffed-up bombastic hooks in the choruses that give you goosebumps, all rounded out by vocal harmonies and Small’s gravelly singing, is once again here in abundance. The sound is big. It’s also decked out with plenty of triple-voice harmonies, straight out of the N.W.O.B.H.M. school, and a thoroughly contemplative guitar dialogue within the solo seasoning (mid-eight passages). It’s an album bursting at the seams once more with pomp and that recognizable British flair for highly vibrant theatrical drama. Still, anyone who knows “Second Nature” will notice that the new album no longer surprises with the same freshness as its predecessor, and that at least two tracks could have been dropped without any trouble. Beyond a dreadful cover that’s unworthy of the high musical quality embodied by the otherwise excellent “The Reality of Miralces,” Lionheart have hit their mark on every count. With all the excellence and perfectionism that come with rich musical experience and, of course, superb playing. Something you’d almost proverbially expect from this legendary quintet.
Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Tracklist:
1. Salvation
2. Thine Is The Kingdom
3. High Plains Drifter
4. The Reality Of Miracles
5. Five Tribes
6. Behind The Wall
7. All I Want Is You
8. Widows
9. Kingdom Of The East
10. Outlaws Of The Western World
11. Overdrive
12. The First Man
13. Still It Rains On Planet Earth (Lacrimosa)
Lineup:
Lee Small – vocals (ex Shy, Surveillance & Phenomena)
Dennis Stratton – guitar (ex Iron Maiden)
Steve Mann – guitar, keyboards (Michael Schenker)
Rocky Newton – bass guitar (ex McAuley Schenker Group)
Clive Edwards – drums (ex UFO, Wild Horses & Uli Jon Roth)
