Album review : PRIDE OF LIONS – Unbridled

Frontiers Music [Release Date : 10.07.26]

Pride Of Lions remain Jim (Survivor) Peterik’s band, with Toby Hitchcock on vocals and Mike Aquino on guitar.

Aquino’s explosive intro to ‘Unbridled’, this new album’s opening track, might remind you of Giant and ‘I’m A Believer’.

It might not.

What this, the eighth POL album will definitely remind you of is the band’s previous seven.

Peterik knows how to write a memorable melody. But his songs are often let down by anodyne lyrics and overblown sentiments. As the saying goes, that’s the way he rolls.

Songs like ‘Edge Of Forever’, ‘I’ll Be Your Rock’ and ‘Hell Or High Water’ confirm for us that his heart is in the right place, but dealing in generalities doesn’t make people sit up and take notice.

Of course, maybe that’s not his objective.

The title track would have sat neatly inside the comforting, cleancut AOR culture of eighties’ radio rock. Or specifically, maybe even have been found on the cutting room floor, leftover from the Vital Signs’ sessions.

‘A Thousand Long Goodbyes’ is an attempts to portray the emotional and personal cost of life on the road, not quite capturing the pathos of Paul Simon’s ‘Homeward Bound’, but nevertheless, it leaves an indelible mark.

It’s one of those bolts of lightning that jolts an album into life, carrying a weight of emotion into the balladic ‘What The Whole World Needs To Know’. Not quite on a level with Michael W. Smith’s ‘Live The Life’, but it’s up there, no question.

Peterik handles several of the lead vocals on the album’s second half. The classy, Chicago like ‘Ride The Lightning’ shows us just how the years have matured his singing voice, adding a depth and richness that wasn’t always there.

The album shades off toward the end, no surprise. But picks up on ‘I Can’t Let Go’, a cool little love song, no doubt a musical homage to Karen, his wife of over fifty years. ***1/2

Review by Brian McGowan

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Power Plays w/c 22 June 2026

DELANEY FAULDS – Beautiful Again (indie)
ANY GIVEN SIN Until We Disappear (Mascot Records)
JADE ELEPHANT Anymore (indie)
DIAMOND RAIN Naked City (Pride & Joy Music)
DAEDRIC Sand Tiger (FiXT)
PARKER BARROW Nothin’ Left To Save (indie)

Featured Albums w/c 22 June 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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