When our illustrious leader said I need your three most influential albums my initial thoughts centred around "you must be joking, three?" My list would be as long as you arm and not all of them would necessarily fall into the rock/metal categories. 

As regular readers may know if they have read my live review of Journey's show earlier in the year the fact that “I’m a bit of Journey fan is akin to saying that the pope is a bit of a catholic”. However turn the clock back circa 20 years ago ( the memory is a bit hazy as to the exact when and were) I was very anti-keyboards in rock and my favourite bands tended towards the likes of Def Leppard, Queensyrche, Iron Maiden, Testament, Metallica, Metal Church et al. The one thing these band having in common being, in the main, a lack of keyboards. All of that changed at a friend's house warming party were said friend played me Frontiers. My knowledge of all things Journey at the time was so vague I even thought Separate Ways (Worlds Apart) was a Foreigner song. To this day however my definition of the ultimate AOR song is still Separate Ways so much of an impact did it make. That thumping keyboard intro, the stunning guitar work and the over the top lyrics inspired by Cain's and Perry’s bitter separations is the perfect opener to the album.

The whole album is a perfect mix of rockers and ballads. The quintessential Journey song Send Her My Love features early on in proceedings and Chain Reaction shows Journey at there rockiest built around a heavy riff and vocal augment between Schon and Perry. But if you thought Chain Reaction rocked there's Edge Of The Blade, an absolute favourite of mine and a track that has been covered by both Jorn and Humanimal to name but two. It also features some of the best guitar work Schon’s career. So good was Frontiers that two of the best tracks the bandy ever wrote, Only the Young and Ask the Lonely, were pulled from the original and replaced with Troubled Child and Back Talk and were only returned to their rightful place in 2006 with the issue of the re-mastered version of the CD.

Just why Frontiers had such an impact I don’t really know but I took the album home with me after that party and that weekend went out and bought both Infinity and Captured from the bands earlier days and loved both those albums as well. As time went by I also investigated the members histories and the bands they were involved with outside of Journey, hence through Frontiers I discovered the likes of Santana, The Storm, Bad English, Sy Klopps Blues Band and Vital Information (Steve Smith's jazz band who I even travelled down to London to see). So from that innocent introduction to Journey their influence had me reaching into my pocket for years to come buying up any and all related material as it was released in abundance.

Recent events in the Journey camp however had turned me off the band a little until I had to force myself to listen to Frontiers again for this article and the love affair was rekindled. The bottom line is that Journey have written some of the best, and most influential, melodic rock tracks of all time and Frontiers was the album that turned me onto both Journey as a band and AOR as a genre, and for that I can only say thank you.

Let us know your views on Frontiers

Track Listing

Separate Ways (Worlds Apart)
Send Her My Love
Chain Reaction
After the Fall
Faithfully
Edge of the Blade
Troubled Child
Back Talk
Frontiers
Rubicon

Line Up

Steve Perry - Vocals
Neal Schon - Guitars
Steve Smith - Drums
Jonathan Cain - Keyboards/Guitars
Ross Valory - Bass

Related Links

Journey - Newcastle Live Review

Journey - Edinburgh Live Review

Journey - Generation CD Review