Gig review: Monsters Of Rock Cruise, NCL Joy, March 10 to 15 2025

Live review: Monsters Of Rock Cruise on the NCL Joy from Monday March 10 to Saturday March 15 2025

By STEVE MASCORD

“AH – are they fish fingers?”

I am at the buffet on the 3804-capacity NCL Joy on night one of the 2025 Monsters Of Rock Cruise, somwhere in the Caribbean. Looking over my right shoulder, I identify the enquirer as Marc Storace, the 73-year-old singer of Krokus – a man who many thought should have replaced Bon Scott in AC/DC.

As I walk back to my ‘stateroom’ (ie: cabin) I’m thinking of things I ‘should’ have said, like ‘yes, but they’re a weird shape if you live in England’. You know how it goes. A little beer-added, I had responded with not much more than a nod. If only Marc, myself and the fish fingers had our time again…

In trying to figure out how to review a mammoth rock festival at sea that ran over five days, I toyed with the idea of opening with a line like ‘and the winner is … Finland!’ Michael Monroe and Shiraz Lane had been shining lights for your reviewer, after all (until Rose Tattoo’s second show – read review HERE)

But the essence of this experience, which a month later looms as a dream-like blur, is walking into a lift behind the pool stage during Chris Holmes’ set and sharing it with Tracii Guns and his guitar tech Critter. Smalltalk ensues, they get out of the elevator at the Atrium and Tracii walks right on stage with LA Guns.

Or every time you leave your Irish wife alone, you find her talking to a different member of her compatriots The Answer – including on an idyllic beach at Great Stirrup Cay, turquoise water lapping a few feet away.

Or Queensryche’s Eddie Jackson joking in another lift (the elevators are the social engine of everything on MOR) about “all the cool people” getting out at a certain level.

This is an immersive rock experiences and I find myself wondering whether it actually does get more egalitarian as you get older or it’s just the author’s hangups incrementally evaporating.

I’ve been on half a dozen of these things and for the first few I was acutely – painfully – aware of the Animal Farm hierarchy at play; artists, music industry, then fans. Many people are very keen to let you know they’re not just fans, including the fellow at Señor Frog’s in Nassau on this cruise who sat next to us in silence for an hour but then spent the five minutes after we made conversation with him outlining his industry cred.

But as I said, maybe we’re all getting older and more relaxed, less obsessed with status. Or maybe it’s just me that was sensitive to it in the first place.

Before we get into the shows, it’s helpful to outline why some big acts might be missing from my account here. With more than 50 bands on show, it’s necessary to put a line through those you’ve seen recently so you can avail yourself of someone else, even something new (to you).

So Extreme, Queensryche and Winger, who I’d seen in the months preceding the cruise, I caught only as I walked past a stage they were in the process of gracing (or in the case of Queensryche, via the floor as our cabin was directly above one of the theatres)

Let’s start then with Tesla, on the top line of the festival mat, always accomplished and convincing. I left about five songs into their set to see someone else but I’d give them a star for each of those performances – “Rock Me To The Top”, “Modern Day Cowboy”, “Hang Tough”, “All About Love”, “Forever More”. Flawless.

Wig Wam didn’t have the best of starts, left sodden by a rain shower as the boat pulled out and unable to help Finland to its afore-mentioned series win. Good on them for coming to America on their self-revival mission and if they visit my town, I’ll pop along for a look.

While we’ve raved about the Tatts already, compatriots Sisters Doll were also one of the success stories of the whole shebang. We used to say there is no substitute for good songs and perhaps SD could do with a few more – but they have so many other things going for them and with standards now set by the fans and not A&R men, the Aussies were covering in glory and departed bereft of t-shirts.

Besides, there was no line in Tropic Thunder that said “never go full Paul Stanley” and “Good Day To Be Alive” was a rather fitting anthem for a swaying converted dining room.

Your reporter had a preconception about Shiraz Lane – as a cheesy Midwestern hair metal rival band – and he couldn’t have been more wrong. For a start, as I’ve already pointed out, they’re from Finland. Secondly, there is absolutely nothing cheesy about these purveyors of insidiously memorable and serious hard rock.

On record the five-piece sounds deceptively processed but aside from elements of recent single “Dangerous”, that’s not evident tonight in the Manhattan Room. In fact, their recorded output does them an injustice. You know when you see a new band and you’re left gape-mouthed, thinking ‘how long has this been going on?’. That’s my first time seeing Shiraz Lane.

Aldo Nova has one hit that features prominently on hard rock radio in America today, “Fantasy” (21 million plays on Spotify). He has assembled a multi-national band and plays what might be termed an quasi comeback show in the Theater. This is like a more AOR-inclined Billy Squier in tone (not saying the actual music is similar) and while it’s far from my favourite show of the week I’d definitely see him again, too.

That’s night one. At this point if you’re here on your own, you stay up all night on the pool deck drinking. If you’re with your wife, you go to bed.

Sweden’s Eclipse were 2023’s Shiraz Lane for me so missing them on the pool stage or in the Theater was simply not an option. On the pool stage especially, they were exactly what I expected – uplifting and life-affirming, big choruses and bigger riffs. However, I realise between shows I actually like one of their albums – Wired – more than I like the band.

This becomes more of an issue for their compatriots Hardcore Superstar, whose 2022 platter Abracadabra I absolutely adore. “They don’t play much off that since the drummer left,” someone tells me. Sure enough, they don’t – and I leave halfway through their set. I never got them before that album and it turns out I don’t get them since.

Let’s speed this up or you’re going to be subjected to War and Peace.

Hurricane, fronted by Aussie Dan Schulman, come off very much like a side project of all those involved with a setlist that gives nods to several bands in which their members have been involved over the years.

Michael Monroe on the pool stage? Astounding. Forty-five years ago, Monroe inspired many of the acts on the Joy this week but is more youthful, adroit and athletic than any of them. He does the splits, he jumps, he lies on the stage serenading individual audience members. He has waited for those he inspired to get old and has awoken from suspended animation (looking and sounding exactly the same) to supersede them all.

Monroe is not just a survivor but a winner, the Real Last Man Standing who deserves to inherit everything.

Former WASP guitarist Chris Holmes, like Hurricane, is worth seeing but it’s all a rather ragged and loose experience.

Two bands on the 2025 Monsters of Rock Cruise had previously ‘lost’ me. One was The Answer, who seemed to have descended into Rival Sons-style distortion which I had given myself several opportunities to embrace live without any success.. The other was LA Guns, who had appeared to have become somewhat translucent facsimiles of themselves, losing their essences as the Sunset Strip’s Rolling Stones.

I’m pleased to say both acts won me back on MOR.

The Answer just melted my face with pure Celtic hard rock and the best guitar tone of the whole event. THIS is the band that toured with AC/DC!

LA Guns didn’t want to play outside in the sunshine – they are Hollywood Vampires after all – so they moved into a small ballroom and, as I said, the Atrium. These were riotous, sleazy, rollicking shows dripping with authenticity. This was the LA Guns I remember, the band I fell in love with so many years ago. Like The Answer, they have now been removed from my own personal blacklist and may they never darken its door again.

The Atrium performance featured a free-form encore with Tracii peeling off his favourite riffs by all the celebrated axemen on the cruise, including Holmes who he had insisted in watching as long as possible before getting in that lift

… another of which was Michael Schenker, who spent most of his time with Robin McAuley doing MSG tunes, which delighted many. I’d have liked to hear a few UFO songs, but there ya go. It’s Michael Schenker.

And Vandenberg’s set was mainly Whitesnake tunes (“He didn’t write any of those songs – I’m not going!” one fellow said during the very annoying delay getting on the ship because of a malfunctioning bridge). Singer Mats Levin has to be heard to be believed – no description here can do his wonderful voice justice, although he was dubbed by a one wit ‘David Coverband’

Riffy Rhino Bucket in the H2O outdoor bar were like a comfortable old shoe that you want to wear until it falls apart. T’was good to finally see The Cruel Intensions, who do put you in mind of their projentors Vains Of Jenna. My reaction to Vixen is strictly neutral, I’ve nothing good or bad to say about them.

It was also a treat to farewell Lynch Mob and indulge in some Dokken magic, in the company of drummer Jimmy D’Anda and Puerto Rican singer Gabriel Colon. Not a show that floored by any means, but someone emotional given the band’s subsequent retirement. Night Ranger flew in to the Bahamas and performed while we were at dock and this was the Big Show, topped off by fireworks. A celebratory performance done perfectly.

And as for everyone else … I didn’t see them. Sorry. It was a day on the beach in Miami and then an overnight flight back to London. Did all that really happen? I think so.

Anyway … where else – in the space of 90 minutes – can you go to a question and answer with The Answer and get sunburned during Eclipse?

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