CORELEONI
Biography and full discography of CORELEONI, with a page for every album, on METAL BOOST.
Biography
CORELEONI
Biography
At a glance
CoreLeoni is the band Leo Leoni — founding member and principal songwriter of the Swiss hard rock band Gotthard — started in 2017. Its purpose was unusually specific: to record again, himself, the early Gotthard songs the parent band had stopped playing.
Ronnie Romero of Rainbow sang on the first two albums, The Greatest Hits Part 1 (2018) and II (2019); the Albanian singer Eugent Bushpepa took over in 2021. III (2022) was the first record made of the band's own new songs, and by the band's own announcement it reached number 2 in Switzerland and number 39 in Germany. A fourth album, Generection, arrives on 11 September 2026 through Reigning Phoenix Music.
Leoni does not accept the description "Gotthard cover band". As he has pointed out in interviews, the songs are ones he wrote.
How it started — 2017, and Gotthard's twenty-fifth year
Leoni set out the reason on the band's own site. After the familiar part of the story — falling in love with a Les Paul at twelve, and a few years later with rock and roll and the dream of a rock and roll band — he puts it plainly: there are so many bands doing tribute to Gotthard and playing all those great songs from the past, so why not do it himself and enjoy it. The same passage names the songs he had in mind: "Downtown", "Firedance", "Higher", "Here Comes The Heat", "In The Name", "Ride On", "Let It Be" and "All I Care 4". It was around the twenty-fifth anniversary of Gotthard's debut album.
2017 is the defensible founding year, and it is also the one point where the sources contradict each other. A piece of Atomic Fire Records promotional copy — which the band reprinted in its own news — says "CoreLeoni, founded in 2018". The next sentence of the same paragraph reads "In 2018 the band surprised the rock community with their The Greatest Hits - Part 1", which is the likelier explanation: the debut album's year has wandered into the sentence about the founding. Everything else points to 2017: the Frontiers signing announcement of 13 November 2017, the Swiss outlet theart2rock's report two days later, the band site's own footer reading "© CoreLeoni 2017 - 2023", the four earliest shows on the band's LIVE page — all Swiss, all December 2017, in Agno, Aarburg, Dietikon and Lugano — and Reigning Phoenix Music's own phrase, "since forming in 2017".
The band is Swiss. No first-party source has ever named a founding city, though. MusicBrainz puts Lugano in its begin-area field and the German Wikipedia says "aus Lugano" and gives Ticino as the origin, but both are user-edited, and the Wikipedia sentence carries no citation. What can actually be checked on the band's own pages is narrower: bassist Mila Merker was born in Bellinzona, guitarist Jgor Gianola's home town is Lugano, and the first four concerts were in Switzerland. That the band is based in Italian-speaking Ticino is not in doubt; a city is not claimed here.
Nor has the band ever explained its name in any source that could be found. The German Wikipedia calls it a play on the Sicilian town of Corleone and on core, Italian for heart, plus Leoni, and notes the lion's head in the logo — with no citation. Ward Records, the Japanese label, describes it as a coinage from Leoni's surname and leone, lion. Neither is the band speaking.
The Romero years (2017–2020)
The first singer was Ronnie Romero, of Rainbow and Lords of Black, announced in November 2017 along with the Frontiers Music deal. Four Swiss shows followed in December, and the debut album came in February 2018 — Ward Records putting the Japanese edition out on the 14th, nine days ahead of the international release on the 23rd.
II, on 27 September 2019, kept to the same idea: more early Gotthard songs, plus two new ones, "Queen of Hearts" and "Don't Get Me Wrong", and a cover of John Lee Hooker's "Boom Boom". Gotthard's Hena Habegger drummed on it; Alex Motta, the band's drummer since, appears only as a guest on two tracks.
The accounts of Romero's departure do not agree. On 13 April 2020 Romero announced on Facebook that he was out, saying the band had decided some three weeks earlier to continue with another singer. The passive phrasing led theart2rock to read it as a dismissal. Leoni's account, given in May 2022, is different: Romero had taken on many projects, scheduling had become difficult, and it was Romero himself who suggested carrying on with someone else. By December 2025 Leoni was putting it more gently still — that they chose separate paths for each other's sake. No source has ever put the two versions side by side, and this page does not choose between them. The band did post, the next day. Its item of 14 April 2020 runs to three lines — that it is with great respect that they must say farewell to their friend Ronnie, thanks for the fun times, and best wishes — and gives no reason at all, so it settles nothing between the two accounts. The live news page is overwritten in place rather than added to, and now reaches back only as far as 13 March 2022; the post survives in an Internet Archive capture.
Eugent Bushpepa, and III
The replacement was the Albanian singer Eugent Bushpepa. The band announced him in its own words, on 17 July 2021. The post is short: they had been lucky enough to meet a new friend with whom to share their lives and their passion, a great human being with the benefit of being a great singer, and would readers please welcome him to the family. theart2rock's report carries the same date, with time-for-metal following on 31 July and Rock Hard on 2 August — so nothing in the press got there ahead of the band. This item, too, has scrolled off the live page, and survives in the same Internet Archive capture. Bushpepa started singing at six, winning a national children's competition, picked up a guitar at ten, and turned professional in 1998 with a band called Sunrise. He won Albania's Festivali i Këngës in December 2017 and represented the country at the Eurovision Song Contest in Lisbon in 2018. One small correction is worth recording: the band's own page for him spells the Eurovision song "Mali" twice, while the contest's official channel titles it "Mall" — the single point on which the official site is the less accurate one.
III followed in May 2022, the band's first album of original material — "CoreLeoni's first original effort", as they put it themselves. Leoni produced; he and Gotthard's Davide Pagano recorded it; Charlie Bauerfeind mixed and Sascha 'Busy' Buehren mastered. Track nine, "Deep In My Soul", is an unreleased song written by Nello 'Neil' Otupacca, a Hammond player and former bandmate of Leoni's. The four bonus tracks were all Gotthard songs the band covered themselves.
The release date splits in two. It had been set for 13 May, but production problems pushed the international edition to 20 May while the Japanese edition kept the original date; 13 May was also the day of the release party at the Old Capitol in Langenthal. The band's own discography strip still shows the pre-postponement "Released 13.05.2022" — on the same site whose news page announced the move.
Two live albums
Metalville Records released the first live album, Alive, on 27 October 2023, recorded on the Rock Generation Tour of 2022 — the first tour with Bushpepa — at Spiez, Switzerland on 25 March. Leoni's comment for the label was that a recording of that first tour with Gent had caught what CoreLeoni actually is.
On 3 July 2025 the band supported Judas Priest at the Hallenstadion in Zurich, in front of what they put at seven thousand people; the same summer put them on a bill with Judas Priest again at the Sous Les Etoiles Festival in Sion on 17 July. The nine songs and roughly forty minutes from the Hallenstadion appeared on 19 December 2025 as Live at Hallenstadion Zurich, digital only. It reaches a disc for the first time in 2026, as the second disc of the Generection double CD.
Generection (2026)
The fourth studio album and the second with Bushpepa, out worldwide on 11 September 2026 through Reigning Phoenix Music. The label describes it as built on a foundation of unreleased tracks, written with more of the band involved than before, heavier and harder than what came earlier, and mixed with an analogue sensibility.
"Howling At The Moon" goes back much further than these sessions. Leoni says in the video's own description that it began in the early nineties as an idea Jgor Gianola and Steve Lee — Gotthard's singer, who died in 2010 — had been keeping for Gotthard, and that it resurfaced while this album was being made.
Line-up
The current five are the five who have pages of their own on the band site's BAND page: Leo Leoni on guitar, Eugent Bushpepa on vocals, Jgor Gianola on guitar, Mila Merker on bass and Alex Motta on drums.
Gianola's first band was Sabotage, formed in Lugano in 1985, and he spent 1998 to 2013 with U.D.O., making seven studio albums and three live ones. His standing in Gotthard is described differently depending on who is writing. His own page says "from 1993 to 1995 … with Gotthard, as a stage performer during the great Dial Hard Tour", and Leoni's own account is that they toured together in 1994. AFM Records writes "ex-Gotthard" and Metalville "former Gotthard guitarist". A search of Gotthard's own site returns nothing at all for his name. This page follows what he wrote himself, and does not call him a member of that band.
Mila Merker was born in Bellinzona and has played bass since he was thirteen. His own page lists five previous bands — Nostran & Vomitors, Soulline, Imperial, Naïve and Mydevice — while Japanese label copy reprinted by Tower Records names Planet Crash and Caranx, which match none of them. Alex Motta was born in 1985, started drumming at five, and took a music diploma under Tullio De Piscopo at the NAM school in Milan in 2008.
The date Alex Motta became the drummer proper is in the band's own news. The post of 26 November 2019, made the day before a tour began, says that it is just over a year since Motta stepped in to cover for Hena, and that it is therefore time to confirm him as an official and permanent member — which puts the start of the stand-in period in the autumn of 2018. Hena Habegger is credited on II (September 2019), so the stand-in period overlaps that record. Habegger's own exit from CoreLeoni is still announced nowhere — not by the band, not by a label, not in the press — and the only place a year appears is an unsourced fan database. Habegger's departure from Gotthard in April 2021 is documented, but that is a different band and should not be read across.
In Japan
Ward Records has released all four studio albums in Japan: The Greatest Hits Part 1 (GQCS-90515, 14 February 2018, ahead of the rest of the world), II (GQCS-90790, 27 September 2019), III (GQCS-91165~6, 13 May 2022) and Generection (GQCS-91785~6, 11 September 2026). Only the first two carry a Japan-only bonus track; from III onward the Japanese edition adds a Japanese booklet and nothing else.
Neither live album has a Japanese edition. Alive circulates in Japan as an import only, and Live at Hallenstadion Zurich reaches Japan on a disc for the first time as the bonus CD of the Japanese Generection. The band has never played in Japan. Its own LIVE page lists every concert from 2017 to 2026, and not one of them is at a Japanese venue.
Discography (as catalogued here)
| Year | Title | Type |
|---|---|---|
| 2026 | Generection | Studio |
| 2025 | Live at Hallenstadion Zurich | Live |
| 2023 | Alive | Live |
| 2022 | III | Studio |
| 2019 | II | Studio |
| 2018 | The Greatest Hits Part 1 | Studio |
A note on sources
This account draws on the band's own site (home, the BAND page and each member page, NEWS and LIVE, plus the Internet Archive captures that preserve older news items), the labels' own pages (Frontiers, AFM Records, Metalville, Reigning Phoenix Music and Ward Records), Ronnie Romero's official site, the Swiss outlets theart2rock and metalfactory.ch, Highwire Daze, Blabbermouth, the MusicBrainz and Discogs APIs, and the Tower Records, diskunion, CDJapan and BURRN! ONLINE pages. Sources disagree about the founding year, about how Romero came to leave, about Gianola's standing in Gotthard, about Merker's earlier bands and about where the name comes from; where they do, the disagreement is stated rather than resolved. Where no source could be found at all — which city the band formed in, and when Habegger left — that is said plainly instead. The band's news page is overwritten in place, so the three announcements it made about its own line-up — Romero leaving, Bushpepa arriving and Motta being confirmed — are taken from the Internet Archive capture of 2 August 2021.
Trivia
What the band was for is set out by Leo Leoni himself, on the front page of its own site. At the twenty-fifth anniversary of the first Gotthard album he wanted to pay tribute to songs the band had set aside — and he names them: "Downtown", "Firedance", "Higher", "Here Comes The Heat", "In The Name", "Ride On", "Let It Be" and "All I Care 4". CoreLeoni did not begin as a vague homage; it began with a track list.
The first drum kit Alex Motta ever played was built for him by his grandfather out of pots and buckets, and he played it with chopsticks from Chinese restaurants. A real kit arrived when he was eleven, and formal lessons began from there. He had started at five, he writes, drawn in by the rock'n'roll records and cassettes his parents kept in the house.
When the drum stool passed from Hena Habegger to Alex Motta was, for a long time, written down nowhere. The band's own announcement is dated 26 November 2019: posted the day before a tour began, it says that it is just over a year since Motta stepped in to cover for Hena, and that it is therefore time to confirm him as an official and permanent member. That puts the start of the stand-in period in the autumn of 2018.
Less than a week on sale, the debut entered the Swiss album chart at number 3 — the band said so itself on 7 March 2018. The same post carried a second figure that appears nowhere else: locally, in Ticino, the record went straight to number 1. It is signed off with the five names of the line-up at the time: Leo, Hena, Ronnie, Jgor and Mila.
The tenth song on III was written by nobody in the band. "Deep In My Soul" is the work of Nello "Neil" Otupacca, a Hammond player and a former bandmate of Leoni's. Leoni fell for it the first time he heard it, but the song had never been released — so, as the band tells it, he simply had to go and ask Otupacca whether they could record it for III. The lyrics are by Flavio René Hochstrasser and Otupacca.
The Magic Rock Night at Vallemaggia on 25 July 2024 was a stand-in job for CoreLeoni: the announcement of 14 May says they were filling in for Glenn Hughes at Cevio. In mid-July the band announced a change of venue from Cevio to Gordevio, saying the Alta Vallemaggia community had been hit hard by the events of recent days. Together with China, the band put a signed Maybach guitar up for charity auction in support of the affected community.
On 3 July 2025 CoreLeoni opened for Judas Priest at the Hallenstadion in Zurich. The nine songs and roughly forty minutes of that set became the live album Live at Hallenstadion Zurich. The band's announcement says those forty minutes simply had to be kept — and not only, it adds, for the people who were in the room that night. Band and label both put the attendance at seven thousand.
Leoni does not accept the label "Gotthard cover band". Asked about it by a Swiss magazine in May 2022, he answered that they have never covered Gotthard at all, because those are songs he co-wrote — and asked in return whether Roger Waters would become a Pink Floyd cover band if he played the whole of The Wall.
Current Members
Current lineup verified from the official artist source on 2026-08-30. Official profile
Albums
The fourth studio album and the second with Eugent Bushpepa. Reigning Phoenix Music issues it worldwide on 11 September 2026, the physical edition a double CD carrying the previous year's live album Live at Hallenstadion Zurich as its bonus disc. Ward Records releases the Japanese edition as GQCS-91785~6.
A recording of the band's 3 July 2025 support slot for Judas Priest at the Hallenstadion in Zurich — nine songs, around forty minutes, in front of what the band puts at seven thousand people. It appeared on 19 December 2025 as a digital-only release.
CoreLeoni's first live album, drawn from the Rock Generation Tour of 2022 — the first tour with Eugent Bushpepa — and specifically the show in Spiez, Switzerland on 25 March 2022. Metalville Records released it on 27 October 2023.
CoreLeoni's first album of original material, and the first with Eugent Bushpepa singing. Production problems pushed the international release back a week to 20 May 2022, while the Japanese edition kept the original date of 13 May. The band reported it reaching No. 2 in Switzerland and No. 39 in Germany.
The second album with Ronnie Romero singing. Alongside further early Gotthard songs it carries two new ones, "Queen of Hearts" and "Don't Get Me Wrong", and a cover of John Lee Hooker's "Boom Boom". AFM Records released it worldwide on 27 September 2019.
The debut album by CoreLeoni, the band Gotthard guitarist Leo Leoni started in 2017. It re-records early Gotthard songs the parent band had stopped playing, with Rainbow's Ronnie Romero singing. The international edition arrived on 23 February 2018; Ward Records had put the Japanese edition out nine days earlier, on 14 February.