Houston is back with a third album in their “Relaunch” series, the aptly titled “Relaunch III” on July 14th, 2023. The basic concept behind the Relaunch albums is for Houston to shine a light on obscure, unknown AOR gems from their personal musical collections. Houston, an AOR band themselves, are true AOR connoisseurs and want to pay their respects to these legendary artists and songs.
The first “Relaunch” album was released in 2011 and featured a cover of “Runaway” by Dakota. The band collaborated on a video for the song with Danny MacAskill, a professional BMX rider, and his sponsor Red Bull and it became a huge success, with over 90 million views on YouTube and close to 2 million streams on Spotify, as of this writing. Much to AOR fans delight, and especially the guys in Houston, the success of the “Runaway” cover got Dakota to reunite and record a brand new studio album. Let’s see what magic “Relaunch III” might achieve!
The Stockholm, Sweden based Houston first appeared on the scene with their self-titled debut album in 2010, which was selected as the Best AOR Album of 2010 by Classic Rock Magazine. The band then went on to play the festival circuit with appearances at Sweden Rock, Download Festival (UK), and Rock of Ages (Germany), as well as touring the UK with Swedish sleaze rockers Crashdïet. Since that time, aside from the success enjoyed with their cover of Dakota’s “Runaway”, the band has been consistently releasing high quality albums featuring top notch AOR originals, including their most recent studio album, “IV” in 2021.
Check out the lyric video for the new single “Live Forever” below.
Pre-order & pre-save “Relaunch III” here.
Tracklist:
1. Live Forever
2. Slipping Away (Marc Jordan)
3. Power Over Me (Atlantic)
4. Heart of Stone (Blackjack)
5. She Don’t (Come Around Anymore) (David Pack)
6. Do You Believe
7. She’s Out With a Gun (Van Zant)
8. Modern Day Delilah (Van Stephenson)
9. Sound of a Breaking Heart (Prophet)
10. Outrageous (Franke & the Knockouts)
11. Running Back (Urgent)
12. Live Forever (80’s Remix)
13. Do You Believe (80’s Remix)
Line-up:
Hank Erix – Lead and background vocals
Carl Hammar – Lead guitar
Richard Hamilton – Keyboards, Piano
Niels Walter – Bass guitar
Additional musicians:
Erik Modin – Drums, Percussion, keyboards, backing vocals, rhythm & acoustic guitars
Michael Palace – Backing vocals & rhythm guitars on “Live Forever” & “Do You Believe”
Weblinks:
www.facebook.com/houstonsweden
www.instagram.com/Houstonsweden
