By JAY ROBERTS

The Cassette Chronicles is a continuing series of mini reviews and reflections on albums from the 1980’s and 1990’s. The aim of this series is to highlight both known and underappreciated albums from rock, pop and metal genres from this time period through the cassette editions of their releases. Some of the albums I have known about and loved for years, while others are new to me and were music I’ve always wanted to hear. There will be some review analysis and my own personal stories about my connection with various albums. These opinions are strictly my own and do not reflect the views of anyone else at Limelight Magazine.

MARCHELLO – DESTINY (1989)

As we travel back to 1989 this week for a look back at Destiny, the debut album from Marchello, I find myself once again wondering just how this particular band fell through the cracks for me. It’s not just that I haven’t heard the music before but I can’t rightly recall even having heard of the band before.

And as I would discover, it is kind of a shame because I ended up enjoying the Destiny album as a whole. As I said, it was 1989 when the album came out. Heavy metal and hard rock was still on top of the musical heap. Led by singer and guitarist Gene Marchello, the album’s creation was also powered by Peppi Marchello. He produced the album as well as writing or co-writing most of the songs as well. While the shared last name indicates they are related, I couldn’t find out the exact relationship online.

As for the album itself, the song “Brown Eyes” opens things up with a quick and lively pace. It has a great catchy sound and once I stopped hearing the lyrics wrong in the chorus, I really got into the song. I was a little less enamored with the next track “Tight Pants”. The lyrics for that one would seem to be “of its time” but while that didn’t bother any sensibilities for me, the song just didn’t really strike me as being all that interesting.

The album’s title track had a kind of mood setting intro that quickly developed into a blast of amped up rock and roll energy. I liked the song for the most part but I will say that I thought the guitar solo was so over the top that it ended up being useless musical masturbation instead of fitting in with the rest of the song.

With a title like “First Love”, you can probably imagine that it would be a ballad. I mean, it was a near universal requirement at the time for bands to do ballads to get noticed. However, while the song does start off that way, it quickly becomes a heavier sounding uptempo number. In fact, before the first verse of lyrics is over, the band is rocking out.

The closing track on Side One of the cassette is a high flying rocker called “What If” and it was quite the earworm as I listened to it.

The second side of the album opens up in a similar fashion with “Living For #1”. It’s a fast moving hook-filled track that keeps you energized throughout. While that “First Love” song played with your ballad expectations, the song “Love Begins Again” is more of a straight up power ballad. The most striking part of this song is that while Gene Marchello’s vocals sound fine throughout the album, I thought they were rather thin-sounding on this one. Overall the song is OK but the strange way the vocals came out didn’t do the track any favors.

While the title of “Heavy Weight Champ Of Love” is spelled incorrectly, the song itself is actually pretty good. It’s got a hard-driving sound and the twist in the lyrical “story” is interesting given the era in which the song came out.

“She’s Magic” is pure adrenaline and while “Winners Never Lose” is another track that starts off as a ballad, the song’s pacing picks up throughout its run time and it was another pretty good song.

Perhaps the most surprising song on the album is the closing track “Rock ‘N Roll Rumble”. It surprised me because it is an instrumental, which is not always a good way to close out an album. But any hesitation on my part was quickly set aside. This is a fantastic track and while I mentioned that guitar solo that was over the top on the album’s title cut, the guitar playing here showcases Gene Marchello’s playing ability but tailors it inside the song perfectly..

It may have taken me more than thirty years to discover Marchello’s Destiny album, I was rather surprised to find out that it was a musically fulfilling release that had a good sense of the melodic with the large portion of its eleven tracks. Full on rocking overall, this new-to-me album and band made for great musical experience!

NOTES OF INTEREST – While the band recorded a second album in 1991 (entitled The Power Of Money), it was never officially released (to the best of my knowledge and Internet research) until 2012 when it came out via AOR Heaven with the new title The Magic Comes Alive.