Stephen
Jimi Bell has impressed me a lot with HOUSE OF LORDS and JOINED FORCES, and this next project is no different. His musicianship, together with BJ ZAMPA, is simply just crazy, and Chris McCarvill is also a beast on bass and also gives a stellar vocal performance as well. Based on the leading single 'Devil's Locomotive', this album could propel their name to the sky, but there are two things that prevented them from flying which are the inconsistency of the whole album and the quite-poor production, which is rare for Kivel releases.
Out of 13 tracks presented here, I found at least 3 weaker songs that maybe most of us can easily pass. 'End of The Line' is the first, the next instrumental 'Demon Wheel' is also harmless but pointless and the last track, 'Forever', is another filler ballad. They should have concentrated on uptempo hard rock because 'Falling Away', 'Love Is A Nightmare', and 'Famous' are awesome.
'Don't Wanna Break' is a nice midtempo radio friendly tune and 'Can't Stop Falling' is the best ballad here. 'Beat Around The Bush' is a good MR.BIG-meets-WHITESNAKE style track. 'Suicide Door' is also a good one with thundering rhythm but perhaps 7.5 at best. If only this has better production, I think the final score will be higher, but lack of awesome tracks also dragged the whole thing down. Good album but I expect more!
77%