Album review : FRONTLINE – Rebirth

May 10th, 2026 by brianmc

Frontiers [Release date : 15.05.26]

Calling your new album Rebirth, 20 years after your last release, seems quite an understatement.

But still, Frontline wade back out confidently into melodic rock’s fast flowing waters. Many have attempted the same kind of comeback, but few manage it with this level of conviction.

Rebirth, we are delighted to say, is like deja vu all over again.

The band’s songwriter and guitarist, Robert Bobel died in 2022. But vocalist Stephan Kamerrer is still up front and he’s still got it. His voice, untouched by time, carries the same strength and clarity it did two decades ago.

Openers, ‘Burning Horizon’ and ‘Blacktop Parachute’ play to the past without sounding cliched or derivative, expansive but tightly arranged, and unlike so many of today’s bands who stifle the vocals with overpowering axework and percussion, Kammerer’s voice has room to breathe, and space to rise into something bold and dramatic, when the moment demands it.

Like ‘After You’re Gone’, a proudly old fashioned ballad, with a marginally more sophisticated sound than we remember from the eighties.

Apart from a great song title, ‘Two Tickets To The Afterglow’ assembles all the ingredients so many loved about eighties AOR – emotive vocals, melodic axework and sparingly rationed keyboard fills and frills, punctuating an incredibly addictive chorus.

And so it goes on, not letting the quality dip. It even finds room for one of melodic rock’s culturally specific words on ‘Boulevard Echo’.

In guitarist/producer/writer, Christian Muhlroth, Kammerer found a talented, like minded music partner. Together they’ve created an expansion of a world that worked best on the simplest of terms, only occasionally straying over the line from honest sentiment into sentimental.

14 tracks and you’re bound to encounter a sense of sameness as you work your way through the album. But it’s quickly dispelled by a suite of high calibre tracks in the second half. ‘Stone Feather’, ‘Burning The Distance’ and ‘Arc Of Lightning’ are AOR Champions League material, going toe to toe with bands like Roulette, Treat, Giuffria, The Storm and others, past and present.

Condensed and distilled with those earlier tracks, they leave the album feeling like a concentrated, finely honed slice of melodic rock. ****

Review by Brian McGowan

Featured Artist: JOSH TAERK

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Power Plays w/c 27 April 2026

SELF-DECEPTION Don’t Belong (Napalm Records)
THE DEVIL WEARS NADA Elephant In The Room (Eonian Records)
blacktoothed Monsters (Arising Empire)
BANKS ARCADE Severance (Arising Empire)
SULLY ERNA & BILLY MORRISON Becoming (TLG/Zoid)
SWEET GORILLA Give Them What They Want (5000 Records)
EMILY WOLFE Lips (indie)

Featured Albums w/c 27 April 2026

09:00-12:00 The Best of 2003 – 2025 (Melodic Rock)
12:00-13:00 The Best of 2003 – 2025 (Melodic Hard Rock)
14:00-16:00 The Best of 2003 – 2025 (Singer Songwriter)

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