Dario Mollo’s Crossbones
Rock the Cradle
Frontiers Music Srl
2016
Interestingly enough, Crossbones are the original vehicle for Dario Mollo, the quite busy Italian guitarist, producer, composer, that’s been responsible for a string of quite successful projects, involving people like Tony Martin, Glenn Hughes, Don Airey and so on. This “sophomore” effort comes almost 30 years after the band’s debut and this time Carl Sentence of Persian Risk & Nazareth fame is the elected man to stand behind the mic, with a mix of new and old faces completing the lineup.
As always Mollo delivers a hard rock that oozes with soulfulness and is quite classy with compositions that feel vintage, but not forced. It’s hard to not draw comparisons to the titans of the 70s and 80s like Rainbow (later period), Purple maybe even Krokus, but Crossbones have also a character all of their own despite their influences, which they proudly wear on their collective sleeves. A bunch of great tracks like “Red”, “Take Me Higher”, “Gates of Time” (a fantastic ballad) ,“I Got This Feeling” and a few more keep the listeners interest keen, while the whole album overall is another rather successful entry in the easily likable (and for good reason) Italian’s catalog.
As always Mollo delivers a hard rock that oozes with soulfulness and is quite classy with compositions that feel vintage, but not forced. It’s hard to not draw comparisons to the titans of the 70s and 80s like Rainbow (later period), Purple maybe even Krokus, but Crossbones have also a character all of their own despite their influences, which they proudly wear on their collective sleeves. A bunch of great tracks like “Red”, “Take Me Higher”, “Gates of Time” (a fantastic ballad) ,“I Got This Feeling” and a few more keep the listeners interest keen, while the whole album overall is another rather successful entry in the easily likable (and for good reason) Italian’s catalog.