Unusual Heat

Unusual Heat is the seventh album, on which Foreigner welcomed a new frontman and placed Mick Jones's guitar at the center of a harder sound. After Lou Gramm's departure, Johnny Edwards — who had sung with Montrose and Wild Horses — joined on vocals. This is the only album with Edwards, and it became the last work for founding drummer Dennis Elliott and longtime bassist Rick Wills. While keeping the big melody of before, the songs feel strongly of straight-line riffs and tension rather than 1980s smoothness. Centered on strongly assertive songs like "Lowdown and Dirty" and "Only Heaven Knows," the band tries to update its own idiom. Edwards's robust voice added a wildness different from Gramm's to the sound. Precisely because it is a period of change, it is a record on which you can savor a different texture of Foreigner.