I can think of few who look less like a rock musician than Kelly Gray. In his picture on the back cover of this release from his new band, Slave To The System, he looks like some Dickensian character who finds himself caught in the headlights of a time machine.
But there are few rock musicians who can write a song and play guitar like Gray. This is rock music of a witheringly high calibre. It nods its head emphatically to the past but it has his eyes firmly fixed on the here and now.
And it's not just Gray. This is a band bristling with talent and glowing with experience. Scott (Queensryche) Rockenfield on drums, Roman (Brother Cane) Glick on bass, and joining Gray on guitar and vocals is Glick's erstwhile band colleague, Damon Johnson, who also had a major role in writing the material here with Gray.
Gray and Johnson use their guitars like targeted weapons, guiding their missile riffs through Glick and Rockenfield's muscular rhythms. On 'Stigmata' and 'Slave To The System' slender, wiry melodies punch their way through armour plated walls of guitars and hit home with an aggressive contemporary edge. Meantime, 'Ragdoll' and 'Will You Be There' are gritty slices of modern metal that still remember when rock was young.
Further on, the unabashed, brazen power of 'Disinfected' and 'Gone Today' provide the mid album kick that maintains the band's unstoppable momentum.
A bold and imaginative use of strings and acoustic guitars supplants the cast iron riffing on 'Live This Life' and 'Abyss'. Both are thoughtful, steely eyed Americana anthems for the heavy metal generation, yet both are infused with an oddly sympathetic spiritual desolation.
Elsewhere, the sheer pace and confidence of the music's execution is sometimes breathtaking. The album is clearly instilled with the confidence and maturity of a team of musicians who've been round the block a few times and don't need no satnav to find their direction home.
Written by
Brian Monday, May 1, 2006
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