HardReviews 6
by Martin Popoff

Rikki Rockett - Glitter 4 Your Soul
(Slave To The Rhythm)

Just goes to show how poor things are in Poison's recorded product world that an offshoot album would arrive miserably indie - no record label, not even really a fake one, no barcode, with a booklet that is colour photocopied (or at least printed in some low press run fashion) and half successfully designed by the controversial drummer hisself. Maybe I'm way off base, and this is just a really, really nice advance, but I don't think so. In any event, the music's not cheap, Rikki and a bevy of b-stars covering ably 11 songs that comprised the happy buttons of any metalhead growing up in the '70s, songs that brushstroke the glam spectrum of that era's hard rock, Rikki also going off the map into non-metal terrain with Mott, Stones, Bowie and T. Rex. Hands-down winner is obscure Angel rocker Can You Feel It, which features a nasty Jizzy Pearl vocal. John Corabi singing Elected is a gas as well, while Bret turns Starz' dumbass Tear It Down (really, there were so many better Starz songs!) into a dumbass Poison song. Throughout, Rikki just does Rikki, a role which is plain but oddly trademarked by a certain high hat swingability. On the subject of drums, Rikki either screws up the tom pattern to Trash, or counter intuitively makes it his own. Whatever the case, it works, as does the sassy female vox from Gina Shock. Good job all told, solid if sparse production, acceptable versions, not an awful juke pick. See www.rikkirockett.com for more... lots more.
Rating 6.5