by Martin Popoff
The Mystick Krewe Of Clearlight
(Teepee)Four points off 10 for being instrumental right off the bat, but then things get easy, enjoyable and even glassy-eyed nostalgic. See, even if Clearlight features members of Crowbar, Eyehategod and Down, what they've come up with here is a stoner rock way more finesse-able and subtley chops-mad than the norm. I mean, if you are the type that thinks Spiritual Beggars' Ad Astra is the bomb - fresh and 1972 at once, more like unloved proggy psyche than Sabbathed grunge - this is for you. In fact this B3-heavy affair might have eclipsed Amott and Co. if it would have had vocals. As it is though, I dunno what you do with this. Watch Dukes Of Hazard or Stutz Bearcat (why am I the only one who remembers that show?) with the sound off and a funny cigarette glowing? Awesome drumming though, Joey Lacaze being one of a rare breed who has taken note of Ian Paice. OK, I added one point back on, because these guys obviously know and love their history.
Rating 7Yngwie Malmsteen - War To End All Wars
(Spitfire)I mean, what do you want from this man? It's hard to believe that people had much to bitch about with Alchemy, lots of blinding soloing, thumping riffs, retro power. . . it's what we begged him for. Well, again and even moreso, I can't see anybody (who knows what they're in for) not totally bowing in prostration to this sledge of personality-rich power metal. So what are the tweaks? Well, I hear a more desperate and passionate vocal performance, Mark Boals' technician pipes approaching the anguish of a life sentence in a castle dungeon. But drummer John Macaluso is trying valiantly to break him out, putting up a rhythmic battle that seems designed to whip Yngwie into a frenzy. And the riffs are their own type of granite ballast, the metal mania of this album letting up only for the tosser instrumentals, the drunken U.S. bonus track (Yngwie and a drunken Police cover band buddy from back home stumble to the studio) and the incredibly valid family man ballad Miracle Of Life, mature, level-headed, maybe the album's best track. Even melodic rocker Bad Reputation thumps and bumps with football persuasion. Yngwie is pretty much the man with a past that is most obsessively committed to, married to, and having his way with, all the rules of power metal practiced by those vacant of such a past. So there's a pride there, a pride in knowing that he wrote most of these rules, and is therefore granted poetic license when he feels like letting it rip. I was going to say 'putting on a clinic', but this record is anything but clinical, despite the halting idiom in which it operates.
Rating 8.5
