The Czech Republic is not exactly blessed with many AOR / melodic rock bands. Alongside their colleagues from Black Tiger, MOONPARK are now setting out to conquer the international scene with their debut “Good Spirit“. They offer keyboard-heavy melodic hard, as it was performed in the late 80s and early 90s by bands such as Frontline, Railway or Shylock.
All songs with English lyrics were recorded by American producer Derek Saxenmeyer (a Chris Lord-Alge alumni) and mastered by Tim Debney of Fluid Mastering, a London studio which has worked with bands such as Deep Purple, Judas Priest and Mötorhead. MOONPARK already toured central Europe and England.
The obvious influences are American AOR bands – opener ‘Dancing in a Lie’ begins like a Survivor classic, with carefully placed power chords against a repetitive keyboard rhythm. Then it launches into the quintessential components of the genre: a simple but strong riff, a good melodic line and a decent guitar solo.
‘Blinding Fire’ continues in much the same vein, with the addition of effective piano touches to underpin it. It’s all mildly sharp but rooted so carefully in melody – what I mean by ‘sharp’ is Separate Ways rather than Don’t Stop Believin’…
Singer Michal Kolacek voice is smooth and melodious. There’s some nineties in his voice, whether it’s a slight edge in ‘Good Spiri’t that reminds of Matt Kramer of Saigon Kick. He certainly hits some impressive notes on ‘Good Spirit’ and ‘Blinding Fire’. Of course, he’s also presumably Czech but singing in English, and while there’s some accent on a few tracks, he does an overall good performance.
The band instrumentation is solid and, lyrics aside, the songwriting does some impressive things. There’s a particularly sassy riff in ‘Kiss Me’ which may well be my favorite song here. ‘Rock ‘n’ Roll Train’ had to get moving quickly with a title like that and it does. It has the fastest pace of any song here, even though it remains firmly within the melodic rock genre.
There’s a fine piano ballad in ‘Together’, and while ‘When We Were Young’ starts slow, develops into a good midtempo number.
“Good Spirit” is a solid and enjoyable debut album from MOONPARK. Old-school AOR / melodic rock fans will dig this, a big break for a small band but an important one. The question now is how they can build on that. It may be hard to get this sort of quintessentially old style material onto the airwaves but it can be done, and there are stages all over Europe. Only time will tell.
Highly Recommended
Tracklist:
01. Dancing In A Lie
02. Blinding Fire
03. Light In The Morning
04. Kiss Me
05.Paradise
06. Good Spirit
07. Rock 'n' Roll Train
08. No Way Back
09.Together
10. Summer Night
11. When We Were Young
12. Dawn
Moonpark – Good Spirit – 2024
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