By the early 1980s, Korean pop culture had opened itself up enough to allow for a hard rock sound to be acceptable to a wide audience. But it wasn't prepared to scale the extreme heights of some bands of the genre.

Even the country's rock fans demanded music that spoke to contemporary trends while still adhering somewhat to the popular music of the past.

Falcon (translated as "Songolmae" in Korean) operated along this sort of principle. Like their winged namesake, they had skyward aims, but never flew too high. On their third album, "Songolmae III," the Korean sextet never rock too hard. Instead, their approach is an affable kind of soft rock that is not without its charms.

The group emerged in 1979 as a sort of supergroup, merging from the ashes of Runway and Black Tetras, two acts popular on the "campus group sound" scene. While their most commonly-referenced contemporaries at the time were Sanulrim, Songolmae eschewed that group's experimental tendencies for a super-slick sound that was custom-cut for the 1980s. This sound is exemplified on "Songolmae III," released in 1983.

I've seen comparisons between Songolmae and Grand Funk Railroad and that's not off-base. But their punchy synths and tendencies towards bouncy pop bring to mind groups even more smooth than Grand Funk. Foreigner comes to mind and that's not a complaint.

Right off the bat, the album's leadoff cut, aptly named "First Moment," reveals the band's dichotomy between hard rock and eager-to-please pop.

The one-two beat and tough-guy bassline is augmented by a guitar-and-organ unison and cowbell that begs one to not fear any sort of reaper. But by the time this half-minute intro ends, all the dirt has been cleared away to make way for a watery funk guitar lick and some heartfelt vocal melodies.

Those vocal melodies are sung flawlessly by Bae Cheol Soo, a clear-voiced tenor with an impressive range and a laudable ability to steer the group away from pure cornball territory.

Today, Bae is a DJ for the Seoul radio station FM4U 91.9.

Later, on "Seeds," Bae and the boys kick into the kind of jauntily upbeat rhythms that would not have sounded out of place on a Huey Lewis and the News record. You could also consider "Songolmae III" to be the Korean "Sports."

But tucked in between these light rockers are some ballads that are quite traditional by Korean pop standards.

It's Bae's restraint that keeps songs like "Sky Lake Love Happiness" or "Rainwater" from blending in with the melodrama of K-pop's earlier, trot-influenced days.

In "Sky Lake Love Happiness," a faint electric guitar lead can just barely be detected, buried in the mix towards the song's end. One wonders if there was some sort of internal conflict in the band, a tug-of-war between conservative musical tendencies and a more contemporary desire to turn the amps back up for good.

After all, the band ends on a wailing high note (by their own modest standards), the grooving burner "Wind."

Replete with psychedelic organ and multiple heroic guitar solos, the band seems to be pushing at its own self-imposed limits as hard as they can.

Songolmae disbanded in 1991, reuniting for one more release in 2010. They remain one of the more groundbreaking band of their era for bringing their soaring hard rock sound into the mainstream.

Listen to the seminal 1983 Falcon album "Songolmae III" RIGHT HERE

Jeff Tobias is a composer, multi-instrumentalist, and writer currently living in Brooklyn, New York. Most recently, he has been researching the history of tuning systems and working on his jump shot.