Album review : PERFECT PLAN – Heart Of A Lion

Frontiers Music [Release date : 28.02.25]

With his fourth Perfect Plan album, Kent Hilli has truly deciphered the AOR code.

Heart Of A Lion is a superb, beautifully crafted melodic rock recording, mixing keys and guitars in varying measures, creating the classy AOR that engages the casual fan as well as the obsessive.

Epic openers, ‘Heart Of A Lion’ and ‘We Are Heroes’ are like a wire in the blood, pulse quickening yet cool and accomplished, the kind of songs that live on in your memory long after you’ve stopped streaming.

And yes, there are strong parallels with Brother Firetribe (specifically Diamond In The Firepit) and Survivor (specifically Vital Signs) here, and maybe some others too, as PP resurrect the genre’s glory years. Both in the original eighties’ sense and the time of its partial resurgence, in the early 2000s.

Among the next 9 tracks there are a handful of treasures that you’ll constantly welcome back like old friends…reassuringly familiar yet never less than distinctive.

Like the galloping ‘Ready To Break’, an AOR thoroughbred, pacey and urgent; or the stadium stomping ‘Turn Up Your Radio’, blurring the line between timeless melodic rock and revivalism, raising our pulse rates even further with a biting axe solo. And ‘Too Tough’, as cinematic and Rockytastic you can get without actually being Survivor.

Elsewhere, the sturdily tuned, quasi religious ballad ‘Unsung Hero’ helps us understand the cover art, while ‘One Touch’ and ‘At Your Stone’ maintain the album’s exciting forward momentum. Their hooks, late in the album, may not be of the heartstopping kind they opened with, but they’ll do fine until the next few heartstoppers come along. ****1/2

Review by Brian McGowan

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Power Plays w/c 24 March 2025

HARRI LARKIN Too Close To The Sun (Robot Distro)
SANDNESS Not Your Dog (Rockshots Records)
DOCTOR BLACK Drag Me Down (indie)
COHEED AND CAMBRIA Goodbye Sunshine (Virgin Music Group)
LEONI JANE KENNEDY Closer (indie)
SMALL TOWN POLITICS Red Lights (indie)

Featured Albums w/c 24 March 2025

09:00-12:00 The Best of 2003 – 2024 (Melodic Rock)
12:00-13:00 The Best of 2003 – 2024 (Melodic Hard Rock)
14:00-16:00 The Best of 2003 – 2024 (Singer Songwriter)

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