Monthly Archives: September 2011
House of Lords – Big Money
House of Lords – Big Money (2011, Frontiers Records)
1. “Big Money”
2. “One Man Down”
3. “First To Cry”
4. “Someday When”
5. “Searchin’”
6. “Living In A Dream World”
7. “The Next Time I Hold You”
8. “Run For Your Life”
9. “Hologram”
10. “Seven”
11. “Once Twice”
12. “Blood”
Band:
James Christian – Lead Vocals, Keyboards
Jimi Bell – Guitar
Chris McCarvill – Bass, Backing Vocals
B.J. Zampa – Drums, Percussion
Producer: James Christian
Despite having some excellent songs, I’ve always been a casual fan of House of Lords. It wasn’t until Cartesian Dreams that I became a bigger fan and was finally convinced to go back and acquire the rest of their catalog. It’s a fantastic body of work and Cartesian Dreams is probably my favorite Lords album so I was pretty excited when Big Money was announced.
On Big Money the band continues to blend AOR with hard rock (that darn near borders on metal sometimes) in a spectacular fashion. This is a utopia where the guitars are beefy, the drums are prominent and keyboards accentuate the songs. By this point, James Christian (the one constant factor in HoL all these years) has really hit upon a formula that works time and time again. Great melodies, big hooks, huge choruses, heavy rock ‘n’ roll, keyboards in a supporting role and fantastic production values. Not to mention Christian’s voice is just as good as ever as well.
The title track starts off the album right, letting you know the Lords are back and ready to rock. Really catchy song with a dash of cynicism thrown in. “One Man Down”, a song with a great catchy chorus, is told from the view of a soldier. “First to Cry” is the first song on the album to sound like it could have come from the ’80s, but I mean that in a good way. “Someday When” is a mid-tempo rocker that follows that same slick ’80s style of “First to Cry” and there are a number of more tracks that seem to shoot for that same sound. “The Next Time I Hold You” is the album’s only ballad and it’s a good one. The album wraps up with the heavy dirty rocker “Blood”.
While Big Money doesn’t quite reach the heights of Cartesian Dreams, this is a still very good addition to House of Lords’ already impressive catalog of melodic hard rock. Another prime example that House of Lords is simply one of the best melodic rock bands of all time. Another top album for 2011 and sure to please fans of the band.
Highlights: ”Big Money”, “One Man Down”, “First To Cry”, “Someday When”, “The Next Time I Hold You”, “Blood”
Alice Cooper – Welcome 2 My Nightmare
Alice Cooper – Welcome 2 My Nightmare [Classic Rock Fan Pack Exclusive Limited Edition] (2011, Universal Music Enterprises/Spinefarm Records UK/Nightmare Inc.)
1. “I Am Made Of You”
2. “Caffeine”
3. “The Nightmare Returns”
4. “A Runaway Train”
5. “Last Man On Earth”
6. “The Congregation”
7. “I’ll Bite Your Face Off”
8. “Disco Bloodbath Boogie Fever”
9. “Ghouls Gone Wild”
10. “Something To Remember Me By”
11. “When Hell Comes Home”
12. “What Baby Wants”
13. “I Gotta Get Outta Here”
14. “The Underture”
Bonus Tracks:
15. “Under The Bed”
16. “Poison” (Live at Download Festival)
Band:
Alice Cooper – Vocals
Steve Hunter – Guitar
Damon Johnson – Guitar
Tommy Henriksen – Guitar, Bass, Keyboards, Backing Vocals
Chuck Garric – Bass
Glen Sobel – Drums
Additional Musicians:
Michael Bruce – Guitar, Keyboards, Backing Vocals
Dennis Dunaway – Bass, Backing Vocals
Neal Smith – Drums, Percussion, Backing Vocals
Ke$ha – Vocals
Dick Wagner, John 5, Keith Nelson, Tommy Denander, Vince Gill, Keri Kelli, Patterson Hood, Pat Buchanan – Guitar
Piggy D, David Spreng, Jimmie Lee Sloas – Bass
Jimmy DeGrasso, Scott Williamson – Drums
Rob Zombie, Kip Winger – Backing Vocals
Welcome 2 My Nightmare is a reunion for all different eras of Alice Cooper. Take a look at the credits! The surviving members of the original group are here (Bruce, Dunaway & Smith) and they have some co-writing credits too, the original Nightmare era guitar duo of Steve Hunter (back in the band full-time) and Dick Wagner are present, more recent Alice gunslingers Kerri Kelli and Damon Johnson (who recently left and has been replaced by Orianthi of all people!), Jimmy DeGrasso, Piggy D (who worked with Alice on “Keepin’ Halloween Alive”), Kip Winger sings backing vocals, Desmond Child co-wrote “I Am Made of You” and Bob Ezrin is producing!
I think pretty much all eras of Alice are represented! I’m surprised Alice didn’t bring back Eric Singer, Derek Sherinian, Ryan Roxie, Eric Dover, Kane Roberts and Jason Hook! In addition to all of those people, Rob Zombie, Vince Gill, John 5 and Ke$ha also perform.
All of this star-power and buzz over doing a sequel to Welcome To My Nightmare has worked as the album sold roughly 21,ooo copies and debuted at #22 on the Billboard charts. This is Alice’s best chart debut since Trash.
Before I get into the music, I want to say that this Alice Cooper Fan Pack from Classic Rock magazine is just outstanding. I had ordered the Fan Pack for Whitesnake’s Forevermore and while that was a good package, this is even better. Not only do you get the album (in what I guess what is the standard hardcover booklet format for these Fan Packs) but there’s a School’s Out pin, Alice Cooper face paint, Alice cut-out face mask, 2 two-sided posters and finally the 132 page magazine called Classic Rock Presents Alice Cooper.
With that out of the way, I will agree that this album is a “return to form” in that it has returned Alice to his old school schizophrenic ways. After dabbling in industrial metal and garage rock for the last decade, Alice is back to genre-hopping. Auto-tune, Rolling Stones, disco, pop-rock, surfer music, symphonies, Tom Petty, rag-time… It all has a home on this album.
The good/bad thing about Alice is that he’s never been afraid to throw his blood-stained top hat in to practically any genre of music. Case in point, after starting off with the piano from “Steven”, “I Am Made of You” is a ballad complete with vocals done in auto-tune and some electronic beats in the background and a piano. I did not like it when I first heard it, but the song has grown on me and is now one of my favorite tracks here. Next, “Caffeine” kicks in with some rowdy rock ‘n’ roll. My first thought when hearing it was that it sounded like Velvet Revolver. Well, I wasn’t too far off because song was co-written by Buckcherry’s Keith Nelson. This and “I’ll Bite Your Face Off” (with its Stonesy vibe) are the most straight forward rockers of the bunch. “The Nightmare Returns” is a short instrumental still incorporating parts of “Steven”.
“The Congregation” is a pretty good Beatles-inspired number that sounds like a track from The Last Temptation but it took me a few listens to get in to. And hey, what album would be complete without that classic Alice ballad? Here that song is “Something To Remember Me By”, a great companion to those late ’70s ballads of his. The next highlight on this album for me is “What Baby Wants”. A true guilty pleasure for sure, it’s a pop/rock song featuring Ke$ha. The final two standouts is the Tom Petty-ish “I Gotta Get Outta Here” and the Fan Pack exclusive “Under The Bed”, a mid-tempo ballad that could’ve come from the Hey Stoopid era.
So, like I said, there is good and bad when Alice attempt to cover so many genres. When he succeeds, he really succeeds. When he fails… yuck. With Vince Gill on guitar, the country-rocker “A Runaway Train” can’t go away fast enough but I can kinda here old school Alice in it. Immediately following is the vaudevillian rag-time of “Last Man on Earth”. Just awful but I can’t decide if it’s worse than “When Hell Comes Home” (which is garnering rave reviews for featuring all the surviving members of the original group).
As for “Disco Bloodbath Boogie Fever”, that’s just goofy fun. Something you might hear from Alice in the early ’80s. Basically filler as is the surf rock of “Ghouls Gone Wild”. “The Underture” closes out the standard edition of the album and it’s an instrumental bring in pieces of songs from both Welcome To My Nightmare and this album.
Overall, the songs are just so varied I think you have to really be patient and let it all soak in. After the first listen, my head was spinning was variety of music. With each listen, I’m picking up on songs more than I had before and while there are some really bad songs on this disc, they are few and far between and the songs I like I like A LOT. Having said that, Welcome 2 My Nightmare is easily Alice’s best since The Eyes of Alice Cooper if not The Last Temptation.
Highlights: “I Am Made Of You”, “Caffeine”, “The Congregation”, “I”ll Bite Your Face Off”, “Something To Remember Me By”, “What Baby Wants”, “I Gotta Get Outta Here”, “Under The Bed”
http://www.AliceCooper.com
http://www.facebook.com/AliceCooper
Buy ‘Welcome 2 My Nightmare’ at Amazon.com
Bonus Words:
Welcome 2 My Nightmare continues a rather disturbing trend of offering different bonus tracks depending on which edition you buy: the regular edition of this album has no bonus tracks, the Classic Rock Fan Pack has “Under the Bed” and a live version of “Poison”, the deluxe edition features a cover of The Animals’ “We Gotta Get out of This Place” and live versions of “No More Mr. Nice Guy” & “The Black Widow”, the vinyl album has “Flatline” and finally iTunes gets the exclusive “A Bad Situation” (which you can’t even purchase as a single, you HAVE to buy the whole album to get it).
I really couldn’t care less about the live tracks but there are four brand new tracks scattered about that I would have loved to have been included on at least ONE edition of the album so I could just buy that one! It’s a cash grab and I don’t think this practice is very fair to the fans. I can’t imagine a significant number of fans are going to buy all of these albums to get those handful of bonus tracks because you’re looking at someone having to spend $80-100 total to snatch up all of these editions. I really don’t understand the thought process here and Alice isn’t the only artist guilty of it. If anything, this only seems to increase the likelihood of illegal downloading.
After that little rant, I have to be honest: I have two copies. The CR Fan Pack and then a standard edition (no bonus tracks) that came with Alice’s autograph when you pre-ordered… Hey, at least I didn’t buy an extra copy for bonus tracks!
Anthrax – Worship Music
Anthrax – Worship Music (2011, Megaforce Records)
1. “Worship” … 1:41
2. “Earth on Hell” … 3:11
3. “The Devil You Know” … 4:46
4. “Fight’em ‘Til You Can’t” … 5:48
5. “I’m Alive” … 5:37
6. “Hymn 1″ … 0:38
7. “In the End” … 6:46
8. “The Giant” … 3:47
9. “Hymn 2″ … 0:44
10. “Judas Priest” … 6:24
11. “Crawl” … 5:29
12. “The Constant” … 5:01
13. “Revolution Screams”/”New Noise” … 15:54
Band:
Joey Belladonna – Lead Vocals
Rob Caggiano – Guitar
Scott Ian – Guitar, Backing Vocals
Frank Bello – Bass, Backing Vocals
Charlie Benante – Drums, Guitar
Produced by: Anthrax
Well, they did it! I don’t know how they did it but they did it! After years of trading off singers like Pokemon cards and after having an album ready to go to press then pulled back and re-worked, through all of the chaos and despite the fact that they were beginning to look like joke… Anthrax has delivered one of the best albums of their career. One of their highest charting albums as well: Worship Music debuted on the Billboard chart at #12 (29,000 copies sold) with only 1993′s Sound of White Noise debuting higher (#7). Rave reviews across the board, chart success… Who would’ve thought this would be the tale to tell about Anthrax in 2011?
What’s cool about this album is that even though this is Joey’s first studio album with the band in 21 years, they didn’t try to pretend and write like it was 1988. In fact, according to Scott Ian, most of the album was written before they even had decided on a singer! Obviously, once Belladonna was on board, a few things changed here and there though.
Worship Music seems to blend the Belladonna era with the Bush era. “Fight’em ‘Til You Can’t” is a great classic Anthrax thrasher complete with lyrics about a zombie apocalypse. The album’s best track, in my opinion. Other old school trash numbers are “Earth on Hell” and “The Devil You Know”, two very good tracks. “I’m Alive” has a great, heavy groove and could’ve been sung by John Bush on We’ve Come For You All. “The Giant” and “The Constant” also have a Bush vibe to them.
“In the End” is a great epic metal number and has been cited by the band as their favorite song on the album and one of their favorite songs in the whole Anthrax catalog. “Judas Priest” is a solid head banger named after the heavy metal icons but lyrically has nothing to do with that band. “Crawl” is up next and is the album’s most modern sounding song, I think (probably why many old school Anthrax fans are dismissing it as ‘filler’). Not that it actually will get there but this wouldn’t sound out of place on radio. The album closes with “Revolution Screams”, yet another solid slab of metal with some nice solo work from Caggiano. After minutes (and minutes) of silence, the “hidden” cover of the punk band Refused’s “New Noise” pops up at 11:09.
The short “Hymn 1″ and “Hymn 2″ instrumentals for some reason are not listed on the album’s track listing on the back of the album.
All told, this is a great album, one of Anthrax’s best and one of the best of the year. 0% filler as even my least favorite songs (“The Constant”, “Revolution Screams” are solid at worst.
Highlights: ”The Devil You Know”, “Fight’em ‘Til You Can’t”, “I’m Alive”, “In the End”, “The Giant”, “Judas Priest”, “Crawl”
Sebastian Bach – Kicking & Screaming
Sebastian Bach – Kicking & Screaming (2011, Frontiers Records)
1. “Kicking & Screaming”
2. “My Own Worst Enemy”
3. “Tunnelvision”
4. “Dance On Your Grave”
5. “Caught In A Dream”
6. “As Long As I Got The Music”
7. “I’m Alive”
8. “Dirty Power”
9. “Live The Life”
10. “Dream Forever”
11. “One Good Reason”
12. “Lost In The Light”
13. “Wishin’”
Band:
Sebastian Bach – Vocals
Nick Sterling – Guitar, Bass, Backing Vocals
Bobby Jarzombek – Drums, Percussion, Backing Vocals
Additional Musicians:
John 5 – Guitar (“Tunnelvision”)
Producer: Bob Marlette
Personally speaking, Kicking & Screaming has been one of the most anticipated albums of 2011. Angel Down was one of my favorite releases from 2007 and it has turned out to be one of those albums that I will still check out every once and awhile. Fans of that album will enjoy Kicking & Screaming as well. This album has a good mix of heavy metal and melodic hard rock. Though it is not as heavy as the last album it does indeed rock hard.
What I’ve always respected about Sebastian is that he doesn’t want to live in the past or get by based on what’s already been done. Whenever he puts out new music, he isn’t trying to make you think it’s 1989. While most of these songs have more melody than any new stuff you’re bound to hear on the radio, they would not sound out of place at all on radio because there’s no retro vibe going on here. It’s all modern melodic rock/metal and “Caught In A Dream” displays that perfectly and should be a hit on radio.
Anyway, as with Bach’s last effort it seems the more I listen to this album the more I like it. When I first listened to it there were some immediate standouts like “Kicking & Screaming” (fantastic), “As Long As I Got The Music” and “I’m Alive” (a great ballad right up there with Angel Down‘s “By Your Side” and “Falling Into You”). The second time around, I started to get into “Live The Life” and “Wishin’”. On my third listen I was picking up on “Tunnelvision”, “Dream Forever” and “My Own Worst Enemy”. Basically, it’s gotten to the point where I like every song. By the way, if I were to make a ‘best songs’ list for the year, “Kicking & Screaming” would definitely be on it. Great track.
Another trend is Sebastian continues to surround himself with some top notch musicians. Bobby Jarzombek is back again on drums and is just a monster. Underrated drummer, in my opinion. As for Nick Sterling? For some time Bach has been bragging a lot about his new guitarist and guess what? He’s right! Nick does a great job and even plays bass on the album. And let’s not forget about Baz himself — always a great vocalist, a standout in his field and this album is no exception. Bach comes from that rare breed of singers whose vocal abilities just do not wear down over time. Phenomenal.
So. The verdict? Kicking & Screaming is full of heavy melodic songs and zero filler. It’s one of the year’s best offerings and an album I can imagine I’ll be playing for some time to come.
Highlights: “Kicking & Screaming”, “My Own Worst Enemy”, “Tunnelvision”, “Caught In A Dream”, “As Long As I Got The Music”, “I’m Alive”, “Live The Life”, “Dream Forever”, “Wishin’”
