While the bulk of AOR comes from America and Europe (yes, yes, okay! Sweden is part of Europe! Happy?) as well as the UK and even my own tiny little home island, there are plenty of other countries where this music flourishes, and in this section I'd like to feature bands or artists who come from countries outside of the normal, the expected and the usual. For this reason, and not to get up anyone's nose, I've decided to call it
which, while it is obviously also the name of a very famous AOR band (it's one of their logos I'm using above, after all) also alludes to places where perhaps it might come as a surprise to find AOR, melodic rock thriving. It certainly does to me, in this first instance.
Look, I'll be honest. I don't know if I'm talking out of my arse here - would certainly not be the first time! - but when I think of Honduras, the images that come to my mind are rebel soldiers, invasions, coup d'etats and all that sort of stuff. I may very well be completely off the beam, but that's the image this country conjures up for me. Well, very quickly skimming Wiki it seems I may not in fact have been that wrong: Honduras was invaded by El Salvador and yadda yadda I don't care: this is not a history lesson. Still, look at where it is. My god, it looks like a tiny, tiny carbuncle being fought over by North and South America.
Anyhoo, the point is that when I think AOR bands, Honduras is not the first country that springs to mind. Nor the second. Or third. Not even the fourth, fifth or sixth. You get the idea. And yet I did just now come across a band from there, who sound, well, pretty rockin'. They're called Hearts on Fire (shut up; didn't you read my intro? Don't expect innovation or originality - they're mostly foreign words here) and it looks like they are one of only three bands of this type listed on
Heavy Harmonies, the website that pretty much serves as the Bible for AOR and melodic/hard rock bands. Hey, that's three more than I had expected!
They look to have had one album, the rather grandiosely (or maybe hopefully) titled
Call of Destiny, and this is a song from it called "Lonely Eyes".
Hearts on Fire - "Lonely Eyes"
Wow! That is crazy! Of the three AOR bands in this country, one of the others is one set up by ex-members of this one (Silent Tiger) which means that in reality there are only two bands there. Ay yi yi! Or something.