BADLANDS — Badlands (review)

BADLANDS — Badlands album cover Album · 1989 · Hard Rock Buy this album from MMA partners
4.5/5 ·
Nightfly
After being fired from Ozzy Osbourne’s band guitarist Jake E Lee set about forming Badlands. Ironically two of his new recruits came from brief stints with his former employer’s previous band Black Sabbath. Drummer Eric Singer had played on the Seventh Star and The Eternal Idol albums and vocalist Ray Gillen though not appearing on any official albums with Sabbath was a fine singer in the classic seventies heavy rock mould. Completing the line up was bassist Greg Chaisson.

Musically Badlands were far removed from the traditional/hair metal vibe of The Ultimate Sin, the last Ozzy album to feature Lee. Inspired by their seventies musical heroes Badlands combined a more contempory metal approach with a seventies bluesy hard rock style with easily identifiable nods to the likes of Led Zeppelin, Bad Company and Free amongst others. Of the three albums including the posthumously released Dusk their 1989 eponymous debut is the best, but only just as all three featured songs of much merit.

Songs range from the more traditional metal of Hard Driver, a brief acoustic interlude in Jade’s Song, the Free-esque groove of Rumblin Train to the Zeppelin swagger of High Wire and album highlight Winter’s Call, a track starting with a light and shade acoustic introduction before piling in with a powerhouse of a riff and some fine Bonham style drumming from Singer.

Badlands never achieved the success they deserved for such a fine band, Singer shortly jumping ship for Kiss. After a major bust up, mainly between Gillen and Lee, Gillen was fired and sadly died in 1993 of an Aids related illness making any chances of a reformation impossible. Fortunately the three albums, this one in particular, that we do have are a fitting testament to one of the finest heavy rock/metal bands of the time.
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