CORNERSTONE

As the 1970s faded away and the 1980s hove into view, the rise of punk and metal meant that hard rock sort of fell between two stools - too hard for people who wanted something softer, but no longer hard enough to satisfy audiences who had heard more aggressive and challenging sounds now flooding the airwaves.

Whilst Styx's Pieces of Eight was a defiant bit of hard rock with prog and pop touches which bucked the commercial trends of the era, Styx found their AOR blend dialling back on the hardness, turning into a form of pop rock with occasional prog influences and a good deal of synthesiser texture from Dennis DeYoung. The synths here certainly date the album a bit - too modern in their sounds to quite fit the mellotrons-and-Moogs era of the early to mid 1970s, but sufficiently dated that they still sound a little cheesy, but then again Styx's guileless, unironic embrace of mild cheesiness is perhaps part of their charm. Cornerstone might see them abandoning the balance of influences that made The Grand Illusion and Pieces of Eight so strong, but I can't say I dislike it.