Love Thing Stealer

Roll that one up a little louder, Zoo Freaks, because the Zoo Crew just dropped the needle on Love Thing Stealer, and the room feels like a bar that never quite closed. This is Storace, the band built around Marc Storace, the Maltese-born voice that carried Krokus across the world, and the cut sits right in the middle of Crossfire, the album Frontiers Records put out on November 22, 2024. Track five. Four minutes and a couple of seconds of stomping hard rock, written by Marc, drummer Patrick Aeby, and Tommy Henriksen, the Alice Cooper and Hollywood Vampires guitar man who also produced the whole record. Olle Romo, the engineer who sat with Mutt Lange for years, mixed it. That is a long way from a garage demo, and you can hear it in the pocket.

Marc has been plain about how the record came together. When Crossfire was announced he said Tommy, in spite of a touring calendar stacked with Alice Cooper, the Hollywood Vampires, and his own Crossbone Skully, actually made time to produce the album. Hell yeah, that is what he calls a good friend. Creating the songs with Tommy felt like magic, and getting Romo on the mix felt like a match made in heaven. Play it loud, he said, and that is exactly how this one wants to be heard. In a November 2024 sit-down with 69 Faces of Rock, Marc walked through the spread of the album and landed on this song without hedging. Screaming Demon would have sat fine inside Krokus. Love Thing Stealer, he said, would work perfectly with AC/DC. Then he talked about his voice the way a guitar player talks about pedals. Different gears. A smooth lane, a gritty lane, and a turbo when the chorus needs to kick. He has always said he is versatile, and this track is the proof he keeps in his back pocket.

The lyric is a barroom portrait, not a love letter. She is a hard shot slamming, a Bloody Mary dancing, big black spiky heels that make a big man fear and squeal. Middle finger painted up. Shake it and break it. No doctor can control her groove. She is a cannon on the loose, a love thing stealer, a wheeler dealer, and she is coming for you. Reviews out of Europe caught the same scent. Markus' Heavy Music Blog heard the raspy voice and the pumping beat and filed the song under the Australian school, AC/DC sitting in the corner of the room. Get Ready to Rock thought it leaned a little close to the old masters, which is a fair argument if you have spent forty years chasing that same kick drum. Defenders of the Faith called it one of the honest bangers on the record, the kind of old-school wallop that leaves a dumb smile on your face. Swiss chart watchers later noted Crossfire climbing to number five at home. For a second solo album cut in the shadow of a band that already sold more than fifteen million records, that is not a small thing.

There is a studio story that only surfaced after the record was out. In a March 2025 post on his official page, Marc welcomed lead guitarist Anna Cara and thanked her for work already in the can. While Tommy was producing Crossfire he had invited Anna, the Newcastle player also tied to Crossbone Skully, to lay guitar on four tracks: Rock This City, Adrenaline, Love Thing Stealer, and Let's Get Nuts. Serge Christen had held the live lead spot after Turi Wicki stepped away, and Anna later took the chair on the road. So the solo you are hearing on this spin is not just the house band. It is a visitor who already knew the room. The live lineup around Marc on the album cycle was Dom Favez on rhythm guitar, Emi Meyer on bass, and Patrick Aeby on the drums, with Serge Christen on lead before Anna came aboard. Old friends, new hands, same gravel out front.

If you want to know how a voice like that gets built, you have to go back to Sliema, on the coast of Malta, where Mark Anthony Storace Crockford was born on October 7, 1951, one of six kids to Anthony Storace and Edna Crockford. He taught himself to sing. At fourteen, in 1965, he was already on a local stage with Stonehenge Union, covering the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Troggs, and the Kinks, and with another outfit called The Boys that took on the harder vocal jobs, including Aquarius from Hair. Woodstock got under his skin. The Boys became Cinnamon Hades and started leaning into Iron Butterfly, Hendrix, The Who, Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin, and Black Sabbath, still slipping in the Abbey Road medley when the room wanted it. Malta had BBC radio, Italian television, and a tourist strip that did not quite know what to do with a kid who wanted the heavy stuff. He has laughed about it since. The last band name on the island did not fit a postcard. He left for London, not to see the Queen, and from there the road bent toward Switzerland.

At the end of 1971 he joined TEA, the Swiss progressive hard rock band, and stayed about seven years. Five LPs came out of that stretch, among them TEA, The Ship, and Tax Exile. They toured Europe under Queen, Nazareth, and the Baker Gurvitz Army. He has said he usually sits in and stays with a band, and TEA was the first long sit. In 1979 the phone rang from Chris von Rohr of Krokus, who wanted a singer for a weekend jam. One long weekend later he was in. Metal Rendez-Vous followed in 1980 and opened the door to the States, Japan, Europe, and South America. Hardware, One Vice at a Time, Headhunter, The Blitz. Gold and platinum plaques. A Pyromania-era run with Def Leppard that he still calls the biggest tour of his life. Around the time Bon Scott died he was approached about an AC/DC audition, and the old rumor has followed him ever since. He has cleared it in interviews. Krokus was climbing fast, and loyalty to the people in the van meant more than the other door. He stayed.

The solo chapter was not a plan so much as a lockdown. Krokus had played a sold-out farewell at Zurich's Hallenstadion in December 2019, with American and South American dates and a Saxon run still on the board, and then the world stopped. In a Blabbermouth conversation he put it simply. He had been with Krokus since 1979. The band had thrown in the towel. He was stuck at home with ideas in a drawer, no label waiting, and time on his hands. He paid for the first production himself. That record, Live and Let Live, came at the end of 2021. The band started playing in May 2022. Through 2023 and 2024 he wrote Crossfire with Henriksen and Aeby, and the second album landed with the big choruses and the open-road guitars you are hearing right now. Krokus has since come back for selected shows. He has said the fans will not let them go, and that there is room between those dates for Storace. Work has been his hobby since he was still studying for exams. He likes being at it.

That is the long road into a four-minute song about a woman who will not be managed. If you are riding with the Zoo Freaks, you already know the station that keeps these deep cuts spinning without a commercial break. Pull up a chair over at THE ZOO and stay for the next one. Marc keeps the official camp at storace.ch, where the band bio walks through Crossfire, the November 22, 2024 release, and the same Tommy Henriksen sessions that built Love Thing Stealer. His verified page is on Facebook, the spot where he posted about Anna Cara cutting guitar on this very track, and his only official account is on Instagram, where the bio still points listeners at Crossfire. No separate official X account turned up that belongs to the singer rather than somebody else with the name, so we are leaving that one off the table. Crank it, brothers and sisters. She is a love thing stealer, and she is already in the room.