Lion: Dangerous Attraction (20th Century Music)

Some of you ’80s children may recognize Lion as the band who performed the theme song for the big screen animated Transformers movie. The band, which featured guitarist Doug Aldrich (who would later join Dio and Whitesnake) and Kal Swan (of Tytan), straddled the line between hard rock and heavy metal, and had a sound similar to Dokken, Leatherwolf and Kick Axe.

1987’s Dangerous Attraction was Lion’s first full-length album. The band continued their “not quite hair metal but not really power metal” style they first demonstrated on their Power Love EP, and even included the EP’s title track on this release. Doug Aldrich’s guitar work is just smokin’ here, and Kal Swan is a massive presence on vocals. The songs are all hard-hitting but very melodic. There are a couple of more radio friendly songs, but for the most part this is a hard rocking album, with “Armed and Dangerous,” “Shout It Out” and “Never Surrender” being the standout tracks.

Despite a great chemistry between Aldrich and Swan, Lion was one of those bands that the fates never quite aligned for. They would go on to release one more album before regrouping as the straightforward rock band Bad Moon Rising. Fans of the ‘80s hard rock and heavy metal scene should definitely have some Lion on their collections, and Dangerous Attraction is a great place to start, especially now that it has been reissued.

Reissue Notes: After spending decades out of print, Dangerous Attraction was finally given a proper reissue in late 2017 (just in time for the album’s 30th anniversary) thanks to the 20th Century Music label. I think many fans would have settled for a bare bones reissue just to have this album on CD, but they went quite a bit beyond that. The reissue features digitally remastered audio that really does justice to the music, the Transformers movie theme is included as a bonus track, and the booklet was clearly prepared with Rock Candy reissues in mind. It features plenty of vintage photos and a really nice essay with new interview material. All in all, it’s a first class reissue of an album that more than deserves a second chance. It’s also limited to just 500 copies, so don’t delay too long or this reissue will be as hard to find as the original.