Journey Album: “Frontiers”

I'm a die-hard Journey fan, and of all their albums, "Frontiers" is my favorite. This album contains beautiful heartfelt power ballads like "Send Her My Love," "After The Fall," and "Faithfully," and jamming rock anthems like "Seperate Ways," and "Chain Reaction." The band pours out their heart and soul to you in every song, making you feel every bit of the emotion they are expressing. Their harmonizing blends in beautifully across the pounding drums, energetic electric guitars, and melodic keyboards. Lead singer, Steve Perry's wonderful, distinctive voice brings the whole package home, with the strong, intense feeling he presents in each song. Journey is a true rock band, and "Frontiers" is the ultimate rock album. If you want heart-thumping rock, and ballads that make you want to throw your hands up and sway from side to side, this is the album for you. "Frontiers" has it all!

What more needs to be said - a super return to the charts with this release after the spectacular Escape album. It opens with the thumping Separate ways and closes with Rubicon. In between we have the beautiful Faithfully and Send her my love. The weakest songs are Edge of the blade and Back talk. Even these are worthwhile. If you are a Journey fan or just like quality AOR then this as well as Escape should be in your collection.

I recently bought this album and was very surprised by how much it actually rocks. None of the singles that I heard from "Frontiers" over the years impressed me much (other than "Send Her My Love," which is arguably Journey's best ballad ever).

The first half of the album is very good, but it really takes off starting with "Edge Of The Blade." I believe that "Frontiers" is a worthy follow up to "Escape," Journey's best hard-rock album ever. The only misstep is "Back Talk," which is too heavy metal (in a bad sort of 80's way) and not conducive to Steve Perry's vocal style at all.

Stand-out tracks according to me: "Edge Of The Blade," "Troubled Child," "Frontiers," "Rubicon," "Send Her My Love," "Chain Reaction," and "After The Fall."

I had to leave out "Separate Ways," and "Faithfully" because they were both overplayed to death when they were originally released. I never really liked "Seperate Ways" anyway. I always thought it sounded like Journey had spent 5 minutes writing it and 5 minutes recording it, which is why I never wanted to buy this album in the first place. I'm glad I finally did, though, because it is a worthy follow up to "Escape."

Frontier released in 1982 shows the Journey's exploration into the harder edge of melodic rock. But the trouble was Journey became too big to venture into such risky business with the huge success of Escape which sold more than 9 million copies. To survive as a rock band, however, metallization was inevitable for them. The band curtly solved the dilennma by placing pop tracks on the first part and hard-edged tracks the second.

Seperate Ways, keyboard heavy opening track is really excellent with dramatism and grace and it became their second largest hit. Send Her My Love is well-written fine ballad and together with another sweet ballad Faithfully they did the job as corporate rock band. Edge Of The Blade,though not as complete as previous five tracks, is a nice example of guitar driven rock. Troubled Child and Frontiers aptly showing Steve Perry's fine vocal makes metal edged part listenable for ordinary music fans. Back Talk has classic hard rock feel with a little blend of latin rock styled drums. Rubicon is my #1 favorite rocker from this album.

Journey as a band, however, went into four-year long sleep with the exception of Only The Young from Vision Quest soundtrack with Ross Valory leaving the band. Ross Valory joined Kevin Chalfant(now the lead vocallist of Two Fires) and became the driving force for Kevin's band VU and The Storm.

Essential if you are a melodic rock fan.

LEts get off the high horse about corporate rock - BEcause if the white stripes and the strokes get much bigger than they will indeed fit the corporate rock bill also - IN short FRONTIERS SMOKES and what a fantastic flow throughout the whole album - Side one 4 big time hit singles (Seperate Ways - Send her my love - Faithfully - After the fall and 1 minor hit and the best song on side 1 (Chain reaction) - "BUT THIS STUFF IS TOO WIMPY FOR ME " well flip over to side 2 or song 6 and Start with Edge of the blade and tell me this album is Corporate rock fluff or doesnt have any balls - When Steve says - "IF IT HURTS WELL ENJOY YOURSELF " and Neal just lets it rip for about a minute and 1/2 (YOU CANNOT TELL ME THAT YOU DONT HAVE THE VOLUME WIDE OPEN ) - Moving on to Trouble Child (THIS SONG is just HEAVY not fast but HEAVY and check the solo where NEal and Johnathan build it up in the middle (TRULY AWESOME) - SOng 8 BACK TALK ROCKS just no 2 ways about it - I REALLY love the title cut FRONTIERS with its kinda offbeat rock patterns THIS song too needs to be cranked and the album end on a very high note with RUBICON - I just get blown away that this corporate rock label is despised that great bands like JOURNEY are casted off as simple corporate rocks bands (AND LETS NOT EVEN GET INTO FOREIGNER CAUSE IF ANYONE SAYS HEAD GAMES IS CORP ROCK is CORP CRAZY) - FRONtiers rocks and rocks hard expeically once you get past the 5 hits on the beginning of the cd -