Kurt Vereecke and I have two things in common: we’re both teachers and we’re both die-hard lovers of all things AOR. While I’m ‘leading’ Rock Report since 1989 (next year we’re celebrating our 20th anniversary), Kurt has made a name for himself in Belgium as a respectable songwriter and musician, mainly in the melodic rock field. He wrote his first song when he was only ten, but knew that AOR was his thing after having listened to the wonderful music of bands like Journey, Loverboy and Toto. He started his musical career as vocalist/guitarist, but soon switched over to keyboards. With his band Rhyana he played all over Belgium, but things moved into gear when one of his demos landed on the office of Long Island Records and a record deal was offered to him. The bankruptcy of LIR however prevented the release of an album, which could have meant a lot for him at the time. After this setback, Kurt decided to do something totally different and being a teacher, he started to write (and record) songs for children as well as music books for teachers.

Having done that for a period of about six years, the time was ripe to return to his first love and he started with the preperations for the "Frozen Rain” album in 2001. Help for writing some of the lyrics came from the Swede Andy Flash (on “Wire Of Love” and “My Heart Believes It’s True”) as well as from the Belgians Erik Van Bers (“On The Run” and “Never Be A Fool Again”) and André Vlerick (“Park Café”). It took Kurt two years to find suitable vocalists for his project, but he already started the recordings in his home studio in Aalter, Belgium in 2002. During the recordings, for which Kurt took all the time he needed, more and more musicians got involved in the project, including some of his personal idols, such as Tommy Denander (Radioactive), Daniel Flores (Mind’s Eye), Steve Newman (Newman), Ollie Oldenburg (ex-Zinatra) and Jim Santos (Norway). Good news reached Kurt when he stumbled upon Gregor Klee, who offered him a record deal with his brand-new Avenue Of Allies Music.

Provided with stunning (cover) artwork from his Dutch friend Eddy Meuwese, the “Frozen Rain” album offers the fan of traditional 80s AOR a total of 12 songs, that are all really investigating. The songs and the production are all well-cared-for and a wet dream for anyone who’s into classic melodic rock. I already knew that Kurt is an excellent songwriter and a terrific keyboard player, but for the uninitiated: he proves that he can hold his ground on this dream-come-true release from start to finish. Although Kurt deserves most of the credit – the man has worked a long time on this project – I have to congratulate him also for his perfect choice of musicians. He chose some of the best available and all of them have contributed to the fantastic end result. I won’t deny the importance of the other musicians, but my interest went out to the lead vocalists in the first place. No less than five singers were invited for the job and Johan Waem as well as Ollie Oldenburg are both taking care of four songs, while Maurice Saelmans sings on two of them and Peter De Zutter as well as Dirk Cauwels can be heard on one track each. I’m sure most of you won’t have heard of these singers before, but believe me when I say that all of them are well-known in the local scene over here.

Musical wise you get a great variety of material: from pure rockers (the first three songs) through ballads (e.g. “My Heart Believes It’s True”) to more westcoast-orientated stuff, with songs like “Park Café” and “Tomorrow”. In between a wealth of melodic rock songs pass in review.

Conclusion: call me chauvinistic if you want, but this really is an album all lovers of classic 80s AOR can’t do without. The fact that the creator of this beauty is an old acquaintance of us here at Rock Report only makes things better. Congrats to Gregor Klee (of Avenue Of Allies Music) for picking up this gem and giving our friend Kurt the chance of his life to make it outside our rather small country. Thumbs up!

Review by Chris Lambert

Rating: 5,5 stars