Rock The City

Alright Zoo Freaks, the Zoo Crew is rolling out "Rock This City" by Storace, off the 2024 album Crossfire. You might have heard it called "Rock The City" around the station, but the title on the record is "Rock This City," and that chorus is built to be hollered back from the cheap seats. Marc Storace, the voice you know from Krokus, put it out as the lead single in September of 2024, with a proper video a couple of weeks later, ahead of the Frontiers Records album on November 22. He wrote and cut it with drummer Pat Aeby, a Krokus man himself, and Tommy Henriksen of Alice Cooper and the Hollywood Vampires, who produced the whole thing. Henriksen even pulled in Olle Romo, the engineer who mixed for Mutt Lange, to finish the record. Marc said creating those songs with Tommy felt like magic, and that getting Romo on the mix was a match made in heaven. Play it loud, he told everybody.

Marc has been plain about what the tune is about. He said "Rock This City" is a relationship gone wrong, saved by a young man's ability to snap out of his negative state of mind and win back the love of his life. The lyric starts with a morning breeze and a look out at the sea, then turns into rain sliding down the pain, and the decision to face the future because love was on the line. He also called it a great song for the live shows, and the reviews backed him up. Writers compared the album to an AC/DC and Def Leppard handshake, and more than one of them singled out "Rock This City" as an anthem, the kind of moderately paced pounder that sits right between the Krokus roar of One Vice at a Time and the bigger hooks of The Blitz. It comes out of a short, spooky little segue called "The New Unity," so when the band hits it live the room already feels like something is about to happen.

The man behind the voice was born Mark Anthony Storace Crockford on October 7, 1951, in Sliema, Malta, one of six kids. Music was already in the house. His mother and oldest sister played classical piano, his father sang the Gregorian Mass in a strong tenor, and after supper the whole family would break into song and invent harmonies just for the fun of it. He caught the rock and soul bug from Rediffusion, the BBC, the pirate station Radio Caroline, and the jukebox at the Wild Swan bar on the corner, stocked with Ray Charles, Otis Redding, Little Richard, Elvis, the Beatles, and the Stones. He taught himself to sing, and at fourteen he was already out front with local bands Stonehenge Union and The Boys, covering the Beatles, the Stones, the Kinks, and the Troggs. The Boys later became Cinnamon Hades and leaned into Led Zeppelin, Hendrix, and the Who.

In 1970 he moved to London to make a career of it, and by the end of 1971 he was the singer in the Swiss progressive hard rock band TEA. They cut five albums, three of the studio ones produced by Dieter Dierks, the man behind the Scorpions, and they opened for Queen, Nazareth, and the Baker Gurvitz Army. In 1976 TEA even took a young Krokus out as support, which planted the seed. After TEA he went back to London and formed Eazy Money, whose "Telephone Man" landed on Metal for Muthas Vol. 2. Then in 1979 Chris von Rohr called and invited him to a weekend jam in Switzerland. Both sides liked what they heard, and Marc became the voice of Krokus. Metal Rendez-Vous followed, then world tours, more than 15 million records, and gold and platinum awards. He was even approached about the AC/DC job after Bon Scott died, and turned it down out of loyalty to the band he had just joined. After the 2019 Krokus farewell, lockdown pushed him into the solo band Storace. Live And Let Live arrived in 2021, Crossfire in 2024, and he has been splitting the calendar between both outfits ever since.

If you want to follow the man and the band, the official home is storace.ch, with the English bio over at en.storace.ch. His verified Facebook page is Marc Storace on Facebook, and he has said the Instagram account @marcstorace is his official and only one, so there is no separate X account worth chasing. The long-running fan hangout is the public Facebook group Krokus Fans Worldwide, where the old crew and the new Storace shows both get plenty of love. The Krokus history lives on at krokusonline.com. Turn it up, Zoo Freaks. This one was made for a room full of people who still believe a song can win somebody back.