Rock Blog #49: R.I.P. Marcie Free

Last week we heard the sad news of Marcie Free’s passing. I've been listening to a lot of her music lately, so I thought a tribute of sorts would be a nice thing.

Born Mark Edward Free in April 12, 1954, Marcie went through a sex change operation in late 1993, and retired from the music industry. In 2009 she returned to the scene with the reformed Unruly Child band, who went on to release 5 albums, the latest one being ”Our Glass House” in 2020. 

In this blog entry I take a look at the classic eighties and early nineties albums of her career. The later Unruly Child albums are well worth exploring too, but I’ll stick to the vintage material for now.

KING KOBRA’s ”Ready To Strike” (1985) was the first major release featuring Mark Free on vocals. The band was formed by drummer Carmine Appice, and they had a pretty distinct image - 4 peroxide blonde guys and the dark-haired ”godfather” on drums. The band had minor success with the single and video ”Hunger”, which was actually written by the band Kick Axe, and later covered by them under the name of Spectre General on the ”Transformers” movie soundtrack. There’s also another Kick Axe-penned track on the album, ”Piece Of The Rock”. 

I rate ”Ready To Strike” as a near-perfect example of mid-eighties melodic US metal, with excellent, moody and melodic songs, great vocals from Free and superb twin guitar attack by David Michael- Philips and Mick Sweda. Most of the songs have an almost cinematic vibe, they should have been used on some movie soundtracks. My favourite songs include ”Tough Guys”, ”Second Thoughts” and ”Hunger”… the album is solid from the first track to the last. 

For some reason, ”Ready To Strike” failed to make it to the charts, and the band panicked. They made a rather drastic change of style, and the result of that was ”Thrill Of A Lifetime” in 1986. I remember being shocked when I heard it for the first time back then. This wasn’t metal at all - what had happened to King Kobra?

Now, after many decades I am not that shocked anymore, and I can mostly enjoy this album for what it is.  The biggest song of the album is ”Iron Eagle (Never Say Die)”, which was the album’s only single and video I believe. It was a minor hit, thanks to being featured in the movie ”Iron Eagle”. As a first taste of the new sound of King Kobra, it probably alienated a lot of their fans with its’ heavy use of keyboards and bouncy pop chorus.  But there was more to come once the fans got their hands on the album…

The laid back, Journey-esque ”Second Time Around” is a good song, but million miles from the exciting, hard hitting sound of the first album. The Russ Ballard-cover ”Dream On” is a bit closer to the original sound in its’ moodiness, but ”Feel The Heat” and ”Thrill of A Lifetime” take us back to the Journey / Night Ranger style. ”Only The Strong Will Survive” wouldn’t sound out of place on Journey’s ”Raised On Radio”, except it’s not as good as most of that album. 

Credit where credit is due, King Kobra were one the first rock bands to cross over to the rap genre with ”Home Street Home”. Still, I can’t really take that song seriously, it sounds like The Fresh Prince of Bel Air fronting a rock band…

After the first seven tracks something weird happens: the old King Kobra returns! Guitars are cranked up with the superb ”Overnight Sensation”. This song would have been right at home on ”Ready To Strike”!  ”Raise Your Hands To Rock” and ”Party Animal” are also decent hard rock tracks. 

Despite the band’s attempt to break into radio the album didn’t really go anywhere, and Free left the band. After being out of the limelight for a couple of years, Free returned with SIGNAL, a band based around the songwriting talent of Mark Baker and Erik Scott. The band was a short-lived one, and released only one album ”Loud & Clear” in 1989. It was produced by Kevin Elson, and while it didn’t set the charts alive, it’s considered a classic AOR album by the fans of the genre. I am not about to argue with that, it’s one of my favourite albums of all time! 

With a great production and impressive songs, the album should’ve been a million seller, but as it often happened back then, there were personnel changes in the record company and whatnot, so they never got the push they would have deserved. Anyway, the album is full of songs I rate very highly - just pick any one of them! Well, I’m not that fond of ”My Mistake” which does feature Eric Martin, but the rest of them are all massive AOR gems. 

The next chapter in the story is called UNRULY CHILD. Released in 1992, the self-titled album is a semi-classic, hard-edged AOR record. The nucleus of the band consisted of Bruce Gowdy (guitar), Guy Allison (keyboards) and Free on vocals. Produced by Beau Hill, it’s a big sounding album with Free adopting a bit rougher vocal approach than on the previous two albums.

Again, despite there being several tracks oozing with commercial potential (”When Love Is Gone”, ”Who Cries Now”, ”Is It Over”…), the album wasn’t a big seller. The times had changed and polished, melodic heavy rock sound wasn’t ”in” anymore. Once again, another cult genre classic was born but that’s about it. The label dropped the band and they re-named themselves as Twelve Pound Sledge and went for a heavier style, but nothing much came out of that. 

During his time off the spotlight, Free had done a lot of studio work for several songwriters, singing on their demos. In 1993, an album of songs written by Judithe and Robin Randall was released as a Mark Free solo album ”Long Way From Love”. It was a brilliant selection of melodic AOR songs. The production wasn’t as great as on Free’s previous albums, the songs were basically polished demos, but excellent songs anyway. Some of them had been previously recorded by major artists such as FM (”Someday You’ll Come Running”) and Agnetha Faltskog (”The Last Time”).  In October 1993 Free flew to United Kingdom and made a rare live appearance as a solo artist, performing songs from the album and a few others at GODS OF AOR festival. He was backed by Swedish band Snakes In Paradise. The set was recorded and released in 1998 on a ”deluxe edition” of ”Long Way From Love” album. 

The first release under the name of Marcie Free was called ”Tormented” in 1995, and it included material written for the second Unruly Child (or Twelve Pound Sledge) album. Rather heavy stuff and not among my favourite MF material. 

Apart from the official releases, there are dozens of demos floating around with Mark/Marcie on vocals. Check out YouTube and you’ll have hours worth of material to enjoy with this golden voice!

BATTLE BEAST: ”Steelbound”

 

2025 Nuclear Blast

Rating: RRRR

Review by Kimmo Toivonen

”Steelbound” is the seventh Battle Beast album, which means that this incarnation of the band has released more albums than the original band led by Anton Kabanen. Some fans are still longing for the traditional power metal sound of the old days, but the band has gone from strength to strength with their more versatile style. ”Steelbound” continues on the same path, incorporating influences from various eras and genres.

The four songs released before the actual album have given the public a good taste of things to come. ”Last Goodbye” is a traditional BB banger with echoes of ”Eden” and ”Beyond The Burning Skies”, while ”Here We Are” is an airy, melodic number. The title track reminded me initially of Abba and The Night Flight Orchestra, but now I have to add ”I’m So Excited” by the Pointer Sisters to the mix! Anyway, it’s one of my favourites and catchy as hell, even though I’m still not sure about the very metallic bridge. The last one of the singles is ”Angel Of Midnight”, an awesome hard rock track and another personal favourite. The verses owe a little to those of H.E.A.T.’s ”In And Out Of Trouble”.

So far, none of the ”new” songs have risen to challenge the singles. There’s five of them, as ”The Long Road” is just a two-minute instrumental intro to ”Blood Of Heroes”. The album opens with ”The Burning Within”, representing the metallic side of the band, but still melodic enough. After a couple of the singles already discussed, we get ”Twilight Cabaret”, which sounds like a relative of ”Master Of Illusion”, although the arrangement features some very unusual elements - do I hear some salsa beats or was that rumba?

Next ”newbie” is the aforementioned ”Blood Of Heroes”, a semi-symphonic track which has Sabaton written all over it, musically and lyrically. ”Riders Of The Storm” shows a light-hearted ”Happy Metal” side of Battle Beast and won’t probably be a favourite of the True Metal crowd... It’s a fun song but I can’t really take it seriously. Then again, why should I? ”Watch The Sky Fall” closes the album, and I was kind of expecting a ballad, but it’s not. A decent, somewhat understated mid tempo song anyway. 

There’s been a change in the songwriting duties, as keyboard player/producer Janne Björkroth isn’t the main writer anymore, with only two songs credited to him and his songwriting partner Elise Widemark. Bassist Eero Sipilä has written four of the tracks, guitarist Joona Björkroth two and one is their collaboration. Vocalist Noora Louhimo shines as usual, she is absolutely one of the most impressive vocalists of today.