Stephen
Second album of Nikki Sixx's side project shows a more commercial approach, adapting lots of modern rock influences, but never swayed away from their true roots of 80s hard rock. Although fans of Motley Crue may find it confusing as it's quite a departure from their sound, but for those who can appreciate diversity, 'This Is Gonna Hurt' is actually an awesome follow-up.
Quality-wise, I guess this one is quite on par with the debut, but somehow I think I prefer this one. James Michael is a prominent singer and also an accomplished musician. With a better attitude than Vince Neil, I bet he can also nailed a much better performance live compared to Neil who to these days, were extremely sloppy at concert. Several winners here are 'Are You With Me', a very modern rock with commercial style and highly addictive, my most fave track here; 'Live Forever', is a tense uptempo tune; 'Sure Feels Right' is a beautiful balladic take and 'Skin' is also nice, a tender piano thing to end the album later.
'Oh My God' is a cross of U2 and Journey, actually a very nice track but I can see the composition is too similar with the two bands, on the verge of falling to copycat category. 'Goodbye My Friends' is surprisingly sounds very Muse, especially from their 'Absolution' release. 'Deadlihood' might be the weakest tune, followed by 'Smile', but both aren't bad at all. The single, 'Lies of The Beautiful People', is also okay but not their strongest, and makes me wonder why they didn’t pick another one as the leading song.
This album is a companion to Nikki Sixx's book under the same just like the first book/album. The reception is also satisfying, selling 30.000 copies in the first week. All in all, I think it's a pretty good album and a safe record to please both fans of classic and modern hard rock. It totally deserved an 80% and ranked at #68 in my top 100 of 2011.