Krokus]

Recorded in front of a hometown crowd in Solothurn, Switzerland, Krokus bring the house down on their live album Long Stick Goes Boom: Live from da House of Rust. Playing off the energy of the frenzied crowd, the band delivers an energetic set that'll easily make listeners forget these guys have been at it for nearly 40 years…

Stylistically, The Blitz pretty much picked up where Krokus' breakthrough, Headhunter, left off. But ultimately, it failed to equal its predecessor's platinum sales, grinding to a halt just past gold status. A shambolic cover of the Sweet's "Ballroom Blitz" (which didn't sound all that great in its original version) is especially painful, and tepid rockers like "Out to Lunch" and "Hot Stuff" simply fail to excite…

It's hard not to pan the stunning averageness of Switzerland's Krokus, one of the more insignificant - yet visually amusing - European contributions to the mid-'80s hard rock landscape. Yeesh! Talk about aging badly. At their best ("Long Stick Goes Boom" and "Eat the Rich"), the group sound like a very poor man's AC/DC; at their worst, their cock-rock posturing simply defies description. OK, so the near-thrash intent of "Headhunter" does manage to evoke the infinitely superior Accept, but there's little else here to even justify the group's existence. In all fairness, there definitely were worse bands than Krokus, but you'd be hard-pressed to find them, and the material here hardly deserves a "best of" tag.

Heart Attack is the tenth studio album by the Swiss hard rock band Krokus, and is described by the band as "the last attempt to keep the band together in a deep crisis". As well as being the band's first album on MCA Records, it saw the return of original Krokus founding member Chris von Rohr. The track "Rock 'n' Roll Tonight" was a live hit, and is still played by the band in concerts. Krokus is a hard rock and heavy metal band from Switzerland. They enjoyed great success in North America during the 1980s. Krokus was founded in Solothurn in 1975 by bassist (and original lead vocalist) Chris von Rohr and guitarist Tommy Kiefer. Former TEA vocalist Marc Storace joined the band as frontman in time for their Metal Rendez-vous album in 1979.

Swiss rockers Krokus had already been around the bend a number of times by the time they scored their first (and only) American platinum success with 1983's Headhunter. Shameless bandwagon hoppers that they were (their origins lay in cheesy, late-'70s progressive rock), the band at least deserve credit for mixing their musical stew just right on this occasion…

Change of Address is the ninth studio album by the Swiss hard rock band Krokus, and is largely seen to be their least successful. It has been described as "plainly one of the worst efforts" from Krokus, and the band's website claims that they and their musical style were put under too much pressure from their record company. Unsurprisingly, Krokus changed their record label for their next studio album, Heart Attack. Andrew T of N.Y. metal band Blackout filled in for Kohler on select dates during this tour.

A typical mid-'80s Euro-metal band from Switzerland, Krokus formed back in the '70s as a symphonic rock outfit modeled on the likes of Yes and ELP, switching to metal when the band's former direction proved unprofitable. The hard rock lineup included Maltese-born vocalist Marc Storace, guitarists Fernando Von Arb and Tommy Kiefer, bassist Chris Von Rohr (originally the lead vocalist), and drummer Freddy Steady. Kiefer was replaced by roadie Mark Kohler in 1982. Their brand of metal relies heavily on AC/DC and the Scorpions, with simple, radio-friendly riffs and repeatedly chanted choruses.

PAIN KILLER (aka PAY IT BACK IN METAL) finds Krokus honing a brasher, hard rock sound that is more focused than their first 2 albums…