3 Things I Love and Hate about Frontiers

[auslander]

I own 110 Frontiers albums now, most bought new so I think it is OK to write this as I have paid my own cash for the mega-Indie releases. And I will keep buying their albums. For an indie their power in our underground genre is huge though. It almost seems like 90% of all hard rock / AOR comes from the Frontiers label.

3 things I love about Frontiers releases:

1. They sign bands from anywhere. How else would I hear these hard rock bands from Latvia, India and Brazil etc.? 

2. All their albums look good with nice artwork and presentation, are produced to a decent standard and sound as good as major label releases.

3. They wave the flag for hard rock better than any label right now, they clearly love the genre and try to meet the needs of the fans who still love physical media.

However, there are some things I also just hate about Frontiers. These are my top 3:

1. They have shit distribution outside of US and Europe. Their albums go out of print the same year they are released. They are expensive and hard to find. They don't seem capable of pushing any artist into the mainstream for crossover hits.

2. A LOT of their releases seem samey. They employ the same producers, same songwriters and even the same musicians across multiple releases. They seem to have a quantity over quality (as far as songs) approach. Only the big, established acts seem immune to the Frontiers meddling and typically their releases are the best.

3. Egos and projects. These concept bands come thick and fast where artists seem drawn from a hat for a singer, guitarist, bass player and drummer. Like a Frankenstein approach to creating "supergroups" will work. It only works about 1 in 10 times (eg. Black Swan) and the rest are forgettable, samey and pointless ego trips.

Rant over... for now.

[Jez]

I've supported the label a lot over the years, but my tastes have shifted quite a bit over time, so am now quite picky what I buy, especially from them. As you say, way too much that sounds the same, with the same cookie cutter approach to quite a lot of their stuff, which for my ears now is a big no no. There are exceptions to the rule and I will still buy some of their stuff, but the majority of it gets ignored, as there is so much better music/bands out there to spend my hard earned on. As mentioned, good presentation and distribution here, but unfortunately the contents are severely lacking in a lot of cases.

[Darkstone]

All good points, but I think at the end of the day, I'd rather live in a world with Frontiers than without it.

[tts42572]

1 hour ago, Darkstone said:

All good points, but I think at the end of the day, I'd rather live in a world with Frontiers than without it.

I basically agree with every point that's been made but at the end of the day, this sums it up for me.

As I look at my CD shelf, there's sure a lot of Frontiers releases on it.  I feel like they've played a big part in helping to keep melodic rock music accessible to us even though I'm sure a lot of the criticism they've gotten is valid too. 

[The Rocker]

Agree! My 2 "Hate" are the same song writers and Musicians. It really is getting ridiculous.

[CMGiordano]

2 hours ago, The Rocker said:

Agree! My 2 "Hate" are the same song writers and Musicians. It really is getting ridiculous.

Especially when they have extremely talented musicians on their roster they could utilize but, for some reason, don't.

[Geoff]

On 10/15/2023 at 2:22 AM, Darkstone said:

All good points, but I think at the end of the day, I'd rather live in a world with Frontiers than without it.

I think this is the one that just about sums it all up. 

One thing Frontiers has done is change my perception of a good, keeper song, to some degree. There are albums released these days that I flick through and discard forever, that I would very happily have lapped up 20, to maybe even 10 years ago. Released singularly, without a bunch of identical albums, they'd have fared pretty well in days gone by. 

It's not like these albums are bad these days (well, some are terrible... just generally speaking, regarding the upper tier of releases). Good musicians and generally pretty decent songs... but the problem is that those musicians and those songs, or a very slight variance of those same songs, are on a dozen other albums released that week/fortnight/month.