Stephen
Fronted by ex-Slik Toxik's singer, Nick Walsh, the Canadian hard rock outfit, Famous Underground, is venturing to the dark territory, slashing the chugging heavy riffings of Black Label Society and modern day Ozzy Osbourne, the alternative rant of Nickelback, and a bite of old-school Metallica/Megadeth. Formerly known as Revolver, Walsh and the gang opens up their new chapter under new branding.
"Wasteland" started with an uptempo low-drive distorted guitar, a strong bomb to crack open. "Overdrive" and "Dead Weight" moves forward with a similar shape, good stuffs but then something tell you that the road ahead is gonna be the same. My concern started to bloom when "Love Stands Still" comes up next. The bland and hookless hard rock riffs puts here is too risky of losing the listeners attention as they're veering the album away to boredom. "Bullet Train" and "Mommy Is A Junkie" aren't getting better and only emphasize the songwriting's weakness.
"Forever And A Day" is a nice insertion of acoustical ballad and strangely is one of their strongest tune. "Wheel of Misfortune" luckily regains the momentum, blowing with galloping riffs, for fans of modern hard rock/heavy metal, this one is hell of a good track to listen to. "On Broken Wings" is another balladic attempt, resembles Metallica's 'Nothing Else Matters' at some point. "Necropolis" is struggling to go past the average poles and "Hell To Pay" is better but still not enough to compete with "Wasteland".
Lack of big hooks and similar riffs template in most of the songs can easily steer away potential fans as Famous Underground's eponymous debut contains too many average tracks and only a handful of tracks can be classified as 'great'. A major improvement in songwriting is required for them to boost the quality higher in the next release, but overall, a decent release to please the fans of BLS or modern Ozzy.