Lynch Mob - Babylon (2023)

Country: USA
Style: Glam/Hard Rock
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 20 Oct 2023
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I was a little surprised to see a new album from Lynch Mob, given that sole founding member and reason for the band name, George Lynch, said a few years ago that he planned to stop using that name because of its racial connotations. Apparently he changed his mind. Now, I know that Lynch Mob changes its line up more frequently than some people change socks, which has to affect their sound, but I wasn't expecting this particular sound.

Obviously, the primary reason to listen to this is Lynch's guitar solos, which are always fascinating, starting on the opener, Erase. However, when not soloing, this has a strange sound for a band that I remember being rooted in hard rock and glam metal. The tone is very alternative, the guitar low in the mix and the bass high, as if they're trying to emulate Saigon Kick's sound without realising that there really isn't a particular Saigon Kick sound because their sound shifts effortlessly from song to song. There's a lot of sleaze here too, especially in the vocals of Gabriel Colón, who has an Axl Rose thing going on.

What's oddest, though, is that, while the tone sounds alternative, the actual songs feel like more traditional hard rock songs with that sleazy filter overlaid for effect, as if we could fiddle with our graphic equalizers and suddenly they'd sound exactly like other bands, like the Cult on Time After Time or Great White during the intro to Erase. Sometimes they might sound like other songs, like How You Fall, which bothered me for a while until I realised it merged the riff of Rainbow's Gates of Babylon with the phrasing of Iron Maiden's The Sheriff of Huddersfield, of all things.

It all means that there's a constant nostalgic feeling here, just like we've heard a whole bunch of these songs before, but never like this. It sounds decent, even if it takes some getting used to, but I think it's at its best when it's trying to actually be sleazy from the inside, starting with the birth of a song, rather than to just write a hard rock song and apply that sleazy filter after the fact. It's Let It Go that connected for me, because it's so raw it could have been on Too Fast for Love. That's a funky stop/start guitar that's delightfully dirty, as if someone was pouring Jack Daniels on it as Lynch is playing. Is there a bass player on this track? Not all of it, that's for sure.

There's some of that on the title track too, which closes things out, but there's an extra layer that might be keyboards to render it a little more complex. It's another one that mixes genres, with a fresh Rainbow vibe, albeit not Gates of Babylon this time even though the song carries part of its title, but underpinning something far more nineties, maybe Soundgarden at their punkiest but a tinge of Queensrÿche too. So, you know, classic sleazy punk grunge prog. This can be fascinating to dissect and it's why this keeps growing on me.

Initially, I really didn't like this sound. There's a song here called Million Miles Away and I couldn't get past how the sleaze filter didn't remotely push the sound anywhere near Hanoi Rocks. And no, it's not a cover, but the shared song title didn't help the comparison. Neither did how laid back it was. However, I listened to the whole album and kept finding little details that stood out to me, so simple dismissal wasn't an option. After a couple of repeats, I found that I wasn't frustrated by the sound any more. I'd got used to it and actually was rather digging it. It's merely a weird texture to find behind Lynch's guitar. That doesn't mean it's a bad one. It just took me a while to get on board.

In fact, while Let It Go is easily the most immediate song here, Babylon is probably the best track on offer. Not only does it not remotely outstay its welcome at a whisper over eight minutes, I felt that it should have kept going. It had found its groove and was milking it nicely, in a manner that goes all the way back to something like Kashmir. Certainly, that groove kept on in my head after it had faded away on the actual album.

It's been a while since I've heard Lynch Mob, so I have no idea how they got to this sound. George Lynch is the mainstay, of course, because it's his band, and drummer Jimmy D'Anda look like he's on his fifth stint so far this millennium. Other frequent members, who seem to leave the band but return again in the time it takes to walk down to the corner for a lottery ticket, aren't present, so the rest of the band is pretty new. Both Colón, on vocals, and Jaron Gulino on bass, only joined in 2022, which means that this is their first album with the band, as The Brotherhood, their previous effort, is six years old now.

I'm intrigued. I didn't like it for a while. Now I like it a lot. The question is how well this will stay. I guess only time will tell.

Love/Hate - Hell, CA (2022)

Country: USA
Style: Hard Rock
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 11 Feb 2022
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I was never a big fan of Love/Hate's breakout hit, Why Do You Think They Call It Dope, but I adored the album it was on, Blackout in the Red Room, and especially its title track, which had a fantastic hook over a sleazy attitude. That album ended with a song called Hell CA, Pop 4 and Jizzy Pearl may still be living there on this new album, the band's seventh and first of new material since the previous millennium, as 2017's Before the Blackout was a collection of early demos and the EP planned for 2013 saw release under Jizzy Pearl's name for legal reasons. He's the only member left now from the classic era.

And, as surprising as it may seem in 2022, over thirty years after Love/Hate's debut and the death of the glam metal era, two unrelated events but ones that arrived only a year apart, this is sleazy heaven. One Hot Minute is so sleazy that it goes beyond that debut and the only comparison I can give is to the original mix of Mötley Crüe's Too Fast for Love. It's a real peach of an opener and an unmistakable statement of intent, so thoroughly drenched in crap beer and a whole smörgåsbord of bodily fluids that we can't help but feel transported to 1981 Los Angeles.

I love this sound, which is utterly no nonsense. It's actually well produced, but it's trying not to be. The goal is clearly to sound like they're on stage in a tiny LA club with sweat dripping off the walls and the production manages that. In fact, they even tease us with it. Gonna Take You Higher kicks off like a Poison-esque ballad, reeking of hairspray and MTV ambition, but then it winks at us and snaps into high gear, like it knows full what plays on MTV nowadays and doesn't care. It's happier in some biker bar in Hell, CA, population hopefully more than 4.

Jizzy Pearl is the only name in the line-up that I recognise and he's totally recognisable, given his bluesier take on early Vince Neil. He's a better singer and his voice is pitched lower, but he does a lot of the same things in the holy name of sleaze. He's also gloriously unpolished here, as if these songs were written on the way into the studio and they only did one take of each. That's not going to be the case, because I'm sure much of it is calculated and rehearsed and finessed, but he clearly had a lot of fun hiding that.

The other name I'd call out for mention here is guitarist Stevie Pearce. He doesn't do anything on this album that hasn't been done in glam metal before, but he nails it, whether he's delivering an overly simple but highly effective riff, wailing in the background or blistering through a solo. He's everywhere, so much so that there has to be a second guitarist here, though I'm not locating any references to one. Maybe he just recorded his rhythm duties separately to his leads, underlining a clever production job that sounds looser than it must have been. Certainly, Lonely Days are Gone, the album's closer, feels more produced, ironically given how raw Wanna Be Somebody is only one song earlier.

What's telling to me is that makes that closer my least favourite track, even though it does blister gloriously at points and wraps up with manic intent. Also telling is that it's hard to pick favourites because there are so many candidates. I could stick with One Hot Minute and Acid Babe, the songs that open the album, but I can't ignore the southern-tinged depth of When You Gonna Come Home. I like Bruised and Battered a lot too, which is mostly Guns n' Roses but with a strange tinge of U2 that isn't the negative it might sound like. If we want to talk negative, I'd go with that minimalist cover art, but it's annoyingly appropriate, because it's as stripped down as the music.

Welcome back, Love/Hate. I hadn't realised how much I'd missed you.