MOUNT MARY – Diamonds of a Fool (2023)

Finnish hard / classic rock band MOUNT MARY are releasing their new album “Diamonds of a Fool“, a disc with a strong ’70s feel driven by big riffs, strong melodies, and superb bluesy female lead vocals. Sporting a retro aura but produced with a crisp modern technique, these songs should appeal to fans of Led Zeppelin, Cactus, Mountain (hey, Mountain’s drummer Corky Laing guests on 3 tracks here!), as well as modern day bands like Rival Sons, Dirty Honey, and The Damn Truth.
All MOUNT MARY members are well seasoned musicians and you can hear that, having worked together with many international artists including Ken Hensley, WigWam, Billy Cobham, Hanoi Rocks, Michael Monroe, Conny Bloom, just to mention a few.
Maria Hanninen’s lead vocals remind me (at times) of Sass Jordan – powerful, soulful.

These are classic rock, Gibson-fueled rockin’ songs spiced with Hammond, acoustic guitar, and Maria’s impressive, emotive performances. Mount Mary songs don’t sound exactly like Bad Company or Budgie or Led Zeppelin or Mountain – but they sound as if the timeframe is right and they jammed with all of them.

And that’s across the different elements that make up the band. Maria is an old school rock singer with a background that’s as much soul and blues as it is rock, more Janis Joplin or Tina Turner than Pat Benatar or Stevie Nicks. She sounds like she would absolutely tear the roof off a small club. Petri Majuri’s guitar has a little southern sassiness to it, again rooted in blues rock but moving into some more rocking.

MOUNT MARY sound to me like the sort of band you stumble onto during a roadtrip that ends up akin to a dream. You stop in some tiny burg in the middle of nowhere for the night and, with nothing else to do, you wander into the local bar for a meal and a beer and find this band tearing up the stage.
The locals are enjoying quietly because they’ve seen them a hundred times, but they’re playing their socks off anyway. And they blow you away. But, the next day, as you cross another state line, you realize that you never found out what their name was, so the experience takes on a dreamlike quality. And you tell people about them for the next couple of decades anyway. Dude, there was this band…

Classic Rock fans have a solid band to discover with MOUNT MARY. Their aim isn’t bring anything new to the table at all, but they mix up what they do bring in fantastic ways. Mount Mary’s states neatly that the band members have been “cooked in many musical broths” and that’s a poetic but very true way to put it. Each musician helps channels them into something new that I’d enjoyed immensely on a first listen and which only got better.
Highly Recommended

01 – Screamin’
02 – Diamonds of a Fool
03 – Insecurity
04 – Color of My Tear
05 – Now You Gotta Cry Alone
06 – Tohu Bohu
07 – I Will Find My Way to You
08 – Heart Astray
09 – Heavenly Light

Maria Hänninen – vocals, guitar
Petri Majuri – guitar
Jukka Jylli – bass
Otto Haapanen – drums
*Special guests :
-Corky Laing (Mountain, West, Bruce & Laing)
-Remu Aaltonen (Hurriganes)
-Per Wiberg (Kamchatka, Opeth, Spiritual Beggars, Candlemass)

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