Nepal Death - Nepal Death (2021)

Country: Sweden
Style: Psychedelic Rock
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 19 Feb 2021
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Sent over from the so strange it must be true department, Nepal Death (no, not Napalm Death) are a psychedelic rock band from Malmö in Sweden who felt the need in 2019 to celebrate the life and work of a Danish singer by the name of Eik Skaløe, who died over half a century earlier while following the Hippie Trail, by drug-induced suicide just inside the Indian border with Pakistan. Skaløe sang with the Danish rock band Steppeulvene, which means the Steppenwolves, and they were formed the same year as Steppenwolf, who, of course, are far more famous in the English speaking world, courtesy of those two magic words that they introduced into the world of rock lyrics: "heavy metal".

Steppeulvene only released one album, 1967's Hip, before splitting up, because the loss of a frontman as iconic as Skaløe was too much to get past. However, they've become a huge influence on Danish rock music, in part because Hip was the first album to feature Danish lyrics. Now, Nepal Death are Swedes, I believe, not Danes, and they sing neither in Danish nor Swedish; their lyrics are in English, when they aren't chants in what I presume is Hindi. While there's a lot of American acid rock in the band's sound, there's even more eastern spiritual music. Sometimes this sounds like a Hare Krishna group picked up instruments and decided to rock out.

And that all kind of makes sense, once we grasp what the band are doing, but that's not the boundary of their style. After all, it isn't remotely surprising to find that Sadhu Satan (The Durukti Mantra), Om Kali Ma and Shadow Empress of Kathmandu are psychedelic rock songs with eastern flavours. What is surprising is how much Wytches sounds like it could have been written by Siouxsie and the Banshees, even with a lead guitar with a fuzzy tone. The sitars only show up as the song ends and we're back in a sampled ethnographical documentary.

I like some of this a lot because it's played seriously, even though the gimmick is transparent and the most ridiculously titled material (such as She Smelled of Hash, which they claim may be a cover of a song they found on a home recorded cassette in a Kathmandu fleamarket; clearly it isn't), still sounds excellent. As serious music, it finds some fantastic grooves. There's some of that on Sadhu Satan but it really kicks in with Shadow Empress of Kathmandu, even if the ethnic touches extend to something as western as a Celtic lilt to the vocals that reminds of Dolores O'Riordan. It's more overt still on Om Kali Ma and Sita Ram.

The feel is important here or the whole thing would collapse under the weight of its concept. It's all phrased as if this was a journey down the Hippie Trail that Eik Skaløe took, but actually making it to Nepal and returning home afterwards with field recordings to sample. I didn't buy into it at all, with the narrative documentarian somewhat distracting, but I did like what they did with the concept as it does feel immersive at points and the ritual chants are well integrated. Everything builds to Dead in Nepal, surely the band's oldest song, written about Skaløe, that's clearly the root of everything else.

Nepal Death cite bands like Hawkwind, Blue Öyster Cult and Amon Düül II as influences. Hawkwind are probably the most obvious, not because this sounds like space rock (though Ana Merga is credited on theremin), but because it's a multi-layered performance, with songs that unfold like trips and include credits for poetry and occult recitations. It wouldn't surprise to find interpretive dancers on stage in only body paint, like Stacia, especially during the more ritual sections. It has to be a theatrical stage show and it's the chants that make it truly special.

So, I'll buy into this concept. It's certainly an interesting album that plays unlike anything else that I can name. My question has to be where they'll go from here. Is this just a one off or will Nepal Death be an ongoing concern? The quality is certainly there, as these six musicians, who all come from other established bands, are very good at what they do, and there are a number of guest appearances too. I just wonder if the gimmick will end up owning them. It hasn't yet. And, dude. That cover. Why is it not on my wall yet?

Einherjer - North Star (2021)

Country: Norway
Style: Viking Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 26 Feb 2021
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Norwegian Viking metal band Einherjer have returned to Napalm Records after a quarter of a century. The last album they released on Napalm was their debut, Dragons of the North, in 1996, and the world is a very different place now to then. Viking metal wasn't new in 1996 but it wasn't a particularly busy genre back then and it hadn't spread very far outside of Scandinavia. Now Viking metal has found its way across the globe, which makes the genre an interesting one for the musicologists to define.

Einherjer have also grown as a band in those twenty-five years and this, their eighth album, is clearly more mature than their debut, even though, at heart, it's still simple in mindset. Viking metal is most often described as black metal slowed down somewhat with folk instrumentation added and the lyrics focusing on paganism rather than Satanism. That's mostly true, but I've always felt that Viking metal is a sonic exploration of strength and that's really applicable here.

Everything on this album speaks from a position of strength. It's not particularly fast, certainly not if compared with the blastbeats and wall of sound guitars of most black metal, but it's inexorable, ever moving forward with no intention of stopping or diverting its course once in motion. The riffs are of granite and they're accompanied at points by odd anvil noises, which of course are demonstrations of strength too. Have you ever seen a blacksmith who couldn't crush you in his fist? The drums refuse to speed up because Gerhard Storesund, formerly known as Ulvar, is more interested in beating the crap out of them and letting them echo. We just know he could drum ten times faster if he felt an urge. He doesn't.

The vocals from Frode Glesnes, formerly known as Grimar, aren't harsh so much as they're rough. He's bellowing not growling and certainly not singing, but his words are easily intelligible and they're as much of a promise as they are a lyric. Everything that comes out of his mouth is a statement and we're sure that he means it all. Now, who did he promise to kill and who did he promise a flagon of ale to in harbour after a successful raid? Someone should keep tabs.

I like everything on this album, but I realise that only two songs really stood out for attention, so it's a 7/10 release.

The best is Listen to the Graves, which wears the black metal origins of the genre on its sleeve, even if we can hear Grimar's bass prowling throughout. It's a strong song anyway but its elevated by a really neatly layered chorus. There are multiple voices there and they play off each other perfectly for great effect. I dig the solo late on too and the even slower drumming that comes later still.

The other is West Coast Groove, an unlikely title to sit on a Viking metal album given that it conjures up visions of surfer dudes on Venice Beach who might listen to Suicidal Tendencies but might be fans of rap music instead. Of course, those aren't the "raging waves" Einherjer are on about. These are the raging waves of the North Sea crashing against the west coast of Norway, as the longboats prepare to launch. "Behold the West Coast groove," they bellow. "We're the Norsemen. We're marching on."

This isn't the greatest album I'll hear this month and it's not the greatest thing Einherjer have done, but it's a solid and dependable listen that does everything a Viking metal album ought to do. It sails into our worlds and the band intimidate and fight and conquer before heading back home so they can drink about everything they've done within these forty-two minutes. And we look forward to the next visit in another two or three years.

Ashes in Sapphire - From Twilight to Light (2021)

Country: Ecuador
Style: Progressive Rock
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 26 Feb 2021
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Hailing from Guayaquil in Ecuador, Ashes in Sapphire seems to be mostly a one man project, that one man being Christhian Zambrano. He plays all the instruments on this album except the drums, which are the work of Panos Geo, and the strings on Symphony in Blue, which were contributed by a couple of guests, Maria Trejo and Paula SantaCruz. He also contributes all the vocals, except the female voice on Symphony in Blue, which belongs to the Dutch singer Micky Huijsmans. He wrote all the music and lyrics, produced the album and presumably put the kettle on in between recording sessions too.

He describes what he does as electronic progressive metal, which is fair enough, but people expecting metal may be disappointed at how light it is. Even when the guitars are chugging along, the piano is more overt in the foreground. I'd call this progressive rock that merely happens to have some chunky riffs on occasion. People coming in to it expecting prog rock would have nothing to be disappointed in at all, because this finds an agreeable vibe, one that's almost but not quite like anything we've heard before.

Equilibrium is a decent opening song proper, but it's Blank Canvas that grabbed my attention. It has very organic, pulsing keyboards and the guitars try to emulate that when they heavy up a little, but I would call the rest of this song deceptively delicate. The vocal is delivered in the Peter Gabriel style and it interacts with the piano rather than the guitars, even when the guitars ramp up (and the whole song does build very nicely). It's a surprisingly complex song that somehow makes itself seem simple and accessible and that's a particularly neat trick for any prog rock musician to master.

The heart of the album is Symphony in Blue and I wonder if that was a deliberate choice. This is a first album for Ashes in Sapphire and, if Zambrano thinks of it as a metal band, he may be thinking of this as a go forward style. There's a lot of keyboard work here, but it's the guitars that drive this one with a solid chugging riff. It's phrased as a duet and Huijsmans usually sings symphonic metal, for a Dutch band called End of the Dream. She's more restrained here, not soaring off into the stratosphere, but the interplay is nice and there's still a lot of dynamic play going on, especially with a late midsection that's really most of the second half.

Symphony in Blue runs almost eight minutes but it's not the epic on this album. That honour goes to the closer, From Twilight to Light, which runs over twelve. It builds very well, from a rock opening to metal during the midsection and then back to rock to wrap up. It's hardly the best song here, though it doesn't outstay its welcome. Zambrano provides a neat bass, as he did on Cenizas and Symphony in Blue. It finds its vibe and milks it well.

It does remind that, while nothing here lets the side down and there's no filler, some of the pieces of music here are lesser to others. For instance, Under the Rain is a decent song, if listened to separately, but it doesn't do anything that Blank Canvas did better only one song earlier. She Wasn't Dreaming is a decent piece of music too, but it seems more like a warmup exercise than a song proper. And, at the end of the album, the title track is decent too, but it doesn't seem to warrant twelve minutes of album time.

I'll see it all as growing pains. My impression is that Zambrano is a talented songwriter and musician, but he's still figuring out exactly what he wants to write and perform. I have a feeling that his second album as Ashes in Sapphire may be a little different. I'm interested to see how.

Epica - Omega (2021)

Country: The Netherlands
Style: Symphonic Metal
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 26 Feb 2021
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It's been five years since The Holographic Principle, but Dutch symphonic metal legends Epica return with their eighth studio album and it's a generous one indeed, running seventy minutes even before we add in the bonus disc on the deluxe edition, Omegacoustic, though that's not particularly long on its own. Then again, this is the first time they've gone beyond a three year gap and COVID has proved to be an accidental boon to many bands by focusing the mind wonderfully, so it isn't surprising that they have such a wealth of new material.

The sound is as you would expect. This is still symphonic metal in an epic style, elegant from moment one but soaring far higher than it dives, though the grounding often shifts into melodic death metal. The vocals still utilise a beauty and the beast approach, with Simone Simons as pure and clean as ever and the growls of Mark Jansen harsh but far from evil. There are also choral backing vocals here, some of which show up on the intro before Simons and Jansen get to open their mouths, but perhaps most notably on Seal of Solomon.

And, as always, Simons is the dominant voice. Abyss of Time, the first song proper, may start out with the two of them going back and forth, but Simons is the louder voice when they sing together and she doesn't take long to strike out on her own. Jansen sings throughout but, the longer the album lasts, the more Simons takes over, to the degree that a song like Rivers, the third single, is almost entirely her and the softer side of the band's sound.

There's a lot going on in this album but it's engaging on a first listen and only deepens when we take another ride through. The majority of songs are in the five to six minute range and they're generally a strong bunch with neat dynamic play. I like The Skeleton Key, with its pure and crystalline melodies that approach saccharine but never get there and a heavy side that sometimes stands off at a greater distance than usual to add edge without changing the tone. Seal of Solomon and Code of Life bring in the middle eastern flavour Epica often explore and they reminded me of classic Therion, especially through the heavy use of choirs in the former and the build of the latter.

You won't be surprised to find that there are longer songs too or that there's one that's getting hard to explain as time goes by. It's the longest by far, at thirteen minutes, and it's called Kingdom of Heaven, Part III: The Antediluvian Universe. As you can imagine, that means that it continues a song that Epica last visited on their 2014 album, The Quantum Enigma. The first part saw release on Design Your Universe in 2009 but it was also the fifth of the six instalments of A New Age Dawns, the second half of which unfolded on that album but the first half on 2005's Consign to Oblivion. Whew.

This one starts out like soundtrack material, with abundant keyboards and plenty of choral sections, as if Epica were pitching to score whatever the next Middle Earth film trilogy will be. As befitting its length, there's a lot more to absorb, but there's a strong piano solo six minutes in and I'd argue that some of the best Simone Simons parts anywhere on this album can be found late in this epic.

I've reviewed a lot of generous albums this year and many of them have simply been too long. What I think might work fine for forty minutes become stretched at sixty and some of those albums would be better for shedding some of their songs for use as single B-sides, if anyone's even using those in 2021. This one is different. Even with The Antediluvian Universe unfolding in six parts; a seven minute mini-epic, Omega - Sovereign of the Sun Spheres, in three; and four or five songs really being two in one, it somehow remains engaging throughout, even on a second or third listen. In fact, it feels like the band could have just kept on going, if CDs could store eighty or ninety minutes of music.

I thought about going with a 7/10 here, because I realised that almost all my favourite songs show up in the first half and I struggled to remember the final three that wrap up the album. However, Rivers is in the second half, as are the closing sections of The Antediluvian Universe, and repeat listens do help the later tracks to grow. As I mentioned, there's a lot going on in this album, enough that we have to step back and catch sight of the whole thing in addition to what portions have stood out to us while we've wandered through at ground level. So an 8/10 it is.

This is an strong, epic and vibrant release to take Epica into what will be their twentieth anniversary in 2023 (or 2022 if you count the year they spent as Sahara Dust).

Mount Mary - Mount Mary (2021)

Country: Finland
Style: Hard Rock
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 29 Jan 2021
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | YouTube

Here's another band I discovered through the excellent Raised on Rock radio show back in the UK and many thanks to Chris Franklin for that and getting the album over to me. It's a debut album, even if it doesn't remotely sound like one, and the style stretches from rock to hard rock with mainstays such as Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath as the obvious influences. Mean Old Woman thrives on that Zeppelin swagger and October gets notably down and doomy like Sabbath, but those influences remain in play throughout.

It's the others that interest me most and they're a lot more elusive. I'm Like a Mountain, for instance, is a patient old rock song, in affinity with its title, one that feels like we ought to have been listening to it for about four decades. Spine Made Out of Willow is gloriously loose, again in accordance with a neatly descriptive title. It bends here and there but always moves to its own tune, in ways that sound familiar but aren't easily grasped. Mount Mary songs don't sound at all like Bad Company or Budgie or Grand Funk or whatever other bands might leap into mind here and there, but they sound as if the timeframe is right and they jammed with all of them.

And that's across the different elements that make up the band. Maria Hänninen is an old school rock singer with a background that's as much soul and blues as it is rock, more Janis Joplin or Tina Turner than Pat Benatar or Stevie Nicks. She sounds like she would absolutely tear the roof off a small club, a song like Holy Matrimony perfect for a blues night or a rock night, especially with a guest harmonica from Michael Monroe. Petri Majuri's guitar has a little southern sassiness to it, again rooted in blues rock but moving into some Lynyrd Skynyrd.

The band are tight throughout but they occasionally find a magic groove, like they do on Ode to the Forest, that becomes like every band we've ever heard at once. It's Deep Purple and the Scorpions and the Black Crowes and it seeps into our soul. Those are the most timeless chord changes ever and this song feels like it should just become the soundtrack to our lives. In fact, it feels somehow like it's been that all along, even though we haven't noticed until now.

The other strange factor to Ode to the Forest is that it feels slower than it ought to be and that feeling rolls into the eight minute epic that is Footprints in the Dark. Even when it gets sassy to sound like a belly dance and what I believe is a clarinet performed by bassist Jukka Jylli seduces us like a snake charmer, it's achingly slow and the whole world around us slows down to match Otto Haapanen's drums. I swear my heartbeat was slower at the end of this album than it was at the beginning, which is an odd feeling to have on a rock album.

I like this band. I'm not sure they bring anything new to the table at all but they mix up what they do bring in fantastic ways. Mount Mary's Bandcamp page states neatly that the band members have been "cooked in many musical broths" and that's a poetic but very true way to put it. I'd love to know more about their individual influences, but each musician helps channels them into something new that I'd enjoyed immensely on a first listen and which only got better.

Mount Mary sound to me like the sort of band you stumble onto during a roadtrip that ends up akin to a dream. You stop in some tiny burg in the middle of nowhere for the night and, with nothing else to do, you wander into the local bar for a meal and a beer and find this band tearing up the stage. The locals are enjoying quietly because they've seen them a hundred times, but they're playing their socks off anyway. And they blow you away. But, the next day, as you cross another state line, you realise that you never found out what their name was, so the experience takes on a dreamlike quality. And you tell people about them for the next couple of decades anyway. Dude, there was this band...

Alice Cooper - Detroit Stories (2021)

Country: USA
Style: Hard Rock
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 26 Feb 2021
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Alice is back again with his 21st studio album and it'll be a surprise for many listeners, though less so to those of us who heard The Breadcrumbs EP in 2019. Perhaps more appropriately, we should call it his 28th and add back in those seven recorded when Alice Cooper was a band rather than a frontman, as it's a throwback in many ways to those early years of School's Out and Billion Dollar Babies. That's only in part because quite a lot of that band is here.

Two songs here were recorded with Michael Bruce, Dennis Dunaway and Neal Smith, who left the band in 1974 though have been back for odd songs like these on Welcome 2 My Nightmare and Paranormal. Perhaps more importantly, Smith co-wrote one of them and Dunaway two. Bob Ezrin, Alice's producer back in those days, produces again here. He also co-wrote the majority of the songs and performs on a bunch of them, whether through percussion, keyboards or backing vocals.

Other major contributors include regular guitarist Tommy Henriksen, Wayne Kramer of the MC5, jazz man Paul Randolph and Johnny Badanjek of Mitch Ryder & The Detroit Wheels, the common factor in all those names except Henriksen being that they hail from Detroit. This isn't a concept album but it's themed around that city, where Alice was born back in, holy crap, 1948, even if we don't notice much of the time. That means that it follows on nicely from The Breadcrumbs EP, which mostly featured covers of songs from Detroit bands. Two of them are here—the MC5's Sister Anne and East Side Story by Bob Seger—along with two Alice originals, Detroit City and Go Man Go.

Now, Breadcrumbs was a garage rock EP but this is more of a hard rock album like the old days, maybe as a nod to the fiftieth anniversary of Love It to Death and Killer, Alice's breakthrough 1971 albums. I should note here that they were pivotal not just to hard rock but to other genres too. Johnny Rotten has called Killer the greatest rock album of all time. This isn't but it is a thoroughly enjoyable ride to a lot more places than I've heard Alice go on one album in a long while. Admittedly, I don't remember anything about Paranormal, but this plays a lot better to me than Welcome 2 My Nightmare.

To get us in that seventies mindset, it kicks off with a seventies song, Lou Reed's Rock & Roll, which is a new cover, though given that the lyrics mention a Detroit station rather than a New York one, this is really a cover of Mitch Ryder's cover of the Velvet Underground song. The next couple of songs feel as if they ought to be covers but they're not. Go Man Go is still the energy shot of punk rebelliousness I remember from Breadcrumbs, while Our Love Will Change the World sounds like a Beatles single with psychedelia edges. Social Debris, on the other hand, sounds exactly like Alice Cooper.

The sheer variety here means that this is a treat for Alice fans, especially those who have followed him through what sometimes seems like every genre under the sun. Drunk and in Love is a prowling brooder that feels longer than it is but in a good way and Wonderful World does some of that too. Independence Dave is a blitzkrieg that finds its groove quickly and milks it. Detroit City, namechecking a plethora of musical legends from that city, sounded great on The Eyes of Alice Cooper and still does, but it may be $1000 High Heel Shoes that ends up my favourite here. It's a sassy number with horns and sax and a prominent shooby doo backing vocal from what seems to be much of the modern incarnation of Sister Sledge.

I can imagine many reviews talking about the return to an older style and the loose Detroit theme we continually forget about, but I wonder how many will talk about how self-aware this album is. There's a pair of songs here that epitomise Alice's personae. I Hate You is a stomping anthem with lyrics that rage about how awful Alice is on stage: "A guillotine! Oh, big surprise!" And, just to flip that around, Hanging on by a Thread (Don't Give Up) is a catchy little song with narrated verses that offers hope to troubled listeners to the degree that it includes the number of the Suicide Prevention Hotline at the end of the actual song.

That Alice is both of those people may be the primary reason why he continues to be relevant even at 73 years young. That he's made a lot of great music over the years (and, let's be honest, some dreck as well) may be secondary but there's a lot more of it on this album, which is the most enjoyable that he has conjured up in years.

Dalit - Moksha (2021)

Country: Norway
Style: Doom/Death Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 15 Jan 2021
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Metal Archives | YouTube

Unusual circumstances have led me to re-start this review three times over three days so I've listened through Moksha countless times. It's an interesting album because it doesn't behave like most to my brain. For instance, it impressed me from the very beginning and it only deepens with further listens, but it remains a little elusive, refusing to knock me out. It's a good album and it keeps on telling me that it's going to be a great one if only I stay with it but, while it does get better, it never quite finds that magic X factor to shift it into the halls of greatness.

While it's broken into eight songs, it plays to me more like a single 41 minute duet between two very different voices. Eirik Hellem, who is also Dalit's bass player, provides a harsh vocal that's rich but not warm. It's an interesting voice, because Hellem stays in a relatively consistent tone throughout but is still able to intonate and remain engaging. We listen to him, even when we're unable to catch all his words. Guro Birkeli provides a clean female voice that does have that warmth and it's interesting too.

There's a spirituality in her voice, which is ancient enough to drift between Norse, Celtic and even, on The Best of All Possible Worlds, middle eastern mythologies. I believe that Dalit is a Christian band, a surprising fact to me given that the album title is the concept of enlightenment in Hinduism and the band's very name is Hindu, the Sanskrit word that I thought described those at the lowest end of the caste system who deemed "untouchables". Digging deeper, I realise that it's also a term used by those who have converted from Hinduism or Islam to Christianity.

Both voices feel a lot older than they are, as if they've been there and done that and understand what went down, perhaps for aeons. There's a timelessness to them both, as if we're not listening to people but gods whose time may be long gone but who are still around and looking down on we mortals with mixed emotions. Hellem is more urgent and demanding. Birkeli is calmer and more patient, especially on Anthem, where she draws out phrases magnificently. And, while Hellem's voice is always dark, hers isn't simply light to contrast. It's a more flexible voice that meets more needs. It's often soft but it's as often powerful.

The music backs up the vocals capably, the sections Hellem leads being crunchy doom/death with the guitars a wall—if not a haboob following in his wake—and those with Birkeli more delicate and with far more nuance. Beyond more soulful guitar, her sections often feature strings and echoey piano for a sound that isn't just melancholy, it's life. Put together, there's a lot of dynamic play, as each singer gives way to the other for a while, and the overall feel is My Dying Bride, but across eras.

I like this album a lot, even if it steadfastly refuses to become more than it is. Those 41 minutes keep on getting shorter every time I listen. It's getting to the point where I pop it on, let the moods take me and suddenly it's over again. Each song blurs more into the next, so I can't really pull out any as a favourite. Sons of Adam, Daughters of Eve, which opens up the album, is the whole thing in miniature but I think I'd call Anthem the best song here. The guitars are more ambitious and the pace is a little faster in Hellem's sections and Birkeli's are just as immersive. Hallways of Sadness is a highlight too, especially with additional keyboards from Jon Ivar Larsen. I like Fra Jord til støv a lot too, even if it ends the album and I'm still not ready for that.

Ricky Warwick - When Life Was Hard and Fast (2021)

Country: UK
Style: Hard Rock
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 19 Feb 2021
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I remember Ricky Warwick as the lead singer of the Almighty, but it won't surprise anyone who listens to a verse of the title track to this album that he ended up singing for Thin Lizzy too. That's not quite what this is, but it's impossible not to hear some Phil Lynott in his voice, even if it's hard to tell that that's Joe Elliott of Def Leppard behind him. There are a few guests here, including Luke Morley from Thunder, Dizzy Reed of Guns n' Roses and Andy Taylor of Duran Duran. They're dotted here and there, but the album's pretty consistent regardless.

And, like Lemmy, would have said, he plays rock 'n' roll. If we hadn't noticed a rocked up old time feel on You Don't Love with Me, it becomes obvious on Gunslinger, the only cover here. It's a Mink DeVille song, dating back to 1977, and beyond the fantastic sound that is the combination of Gary Sullivan's drums and Robbie Crane's bass, it's the rock 'n' roll that stands out and what's particularly important to note is that it doesn't sound remotely out of place following the three originals that came before it. After this, it isn't surprising to discover that on his prior covers album, he took on Eddie Cochran, Elvis Presley and the Bobby Fuller Four.

So this is rock 'n' roll heavied up to have a hard rock edge, with some punk attitude, some sleazy blues and some country emotion to spice up the gumbo. It's an interesting mix, even if what's interesting is sometimes surprising. I'd Rather Be Hit starts out a little similar to Ants Invasion, for instance, and I really wasn't expecting that. Oddly, it works though, just as the blitzkrieg approach on Never Corner a Rat works and the acoustic ballad that follows it, Time Don't Seem to Matter, on which his daughter Pepper joins him at the mike.

Six tracks in of eleven, that's appropriately the heart of this album, even if its calm singer/songwriter vibe renders it something of an interlude between halves. He covered Johnny Cash too on that covers album. Oddly, he didn't cover Thin Lizzy, because the next song, Fighting Heart, is the most overt Thin Lizzy song here amongst quite a few with a discernable Lizzy influence. Then again, Warwick was born in Northern Ireland and grew up listening to Phil Lynott. It would be more surprising if there wasn't any Lynott in his voice.

I think the first half is generally stronger than the second, but the second has Still Alive and that's an obvious highlight for me, up there with Gunslinger and Never Corner a Rat. It features Warwick's firm voice and attitude, with the return of that gorgeous combo drum/bass sound and wicked slide guitar from Keith Nelson, formerly of Buckcherry, who also produced the album. It's as emphatic as the demo of Clown of Misery, recorded over the phone, isn't (though it's interesting).

It's another overt rock 'n' roll song that wraps up the album though, the appropriately if illiterately titled Your My Rock 'n' Roll. This is the sort of song you expect to hear blaring out of the stage when you walk into the right sort of small bar. It's a simple but energetic stomper that stems as much from Joan Jett as Jerry Lee and it'll have you down the front before you grab a pint from the bar. And that has to be about the best way to end this rock 'n' roll album that I can think of.

This is Warwick's fifth solo album and, if I'm counting right, he's recorded twelve more with Black Star Riders, Circus Diablo and the Almighty. As such, it's not surprising to find that this is mature but it's good to find that it's still energetic and alive.