Album Review - Sinner - Crash & Burn

Sinner has been around for awhile (we're talking decades here) and they have delivered their latest release by the name of "Crash & Burn". This is very much straight forward metal minded hard rock. There are some catchy choruses here and the overall feel is something akin to the bluesy edge of Thin Lizzy, mixed with the vicious rawness of Saxon, some nasty harsher glam for that 80s sparkly feel, a dash of Judas Priest, and a bit of Primal Fear's influence seeping in the cracks.

Sometimes it's nice to just have an uncomplicated album that doesn't ask much of the listener other than presenting an enjoyable good time full of guitar thrills and vocal chills. This is what the album delivers, lots of guitars, thundering rhythm section, and simple straight up songs.
Mat Sinner's voice is a love/hate kind of thing, being gritty on the edges and more of a rock shouter than a true singer with range and finesse. He power forces his way through the songs, which suits the material just fine. His voice also oozes personality and the quirks sometimes remind one of Vince Neil at times.

It's sex and party by way of rock n'roll with a catchy hook, twin guitars and a flash of blues a'la Thin Lizzy lurking behind the curtains. That sums up "Revolution", an American sounding track that seems to have come crawling out of the hair band craze of the 80s. Ties can be heard to Cinderella's party rompers, or Great White for that matter. Souped up cock rockin' 80s radio rock that has that naughty twist and keeping the blues well at hand.

"Heart of Darkness" is closer to the real Sinner tradition, being a crossmix of Thin Lizzy (again) caught up in the oceanic pirating plunder of Running Wild. Co-written by Magnus Karlsson, you can clearly feel his hand that helps guide this track to its completed form. It's one of the finer pieces on the album, and has a sense of class about it that many of the other songs lack.

"Like a Rock" bowls you over in its mid pacing and kinetic energy that flashes power metal at its heart, bright and true. The title track is a rampant barrage of electric guitars darting all over the place and a very German rock sound. U.D.O. and Saxon are just a breath away here.
"The Dog" has the attitude of an angry maddened mutt and the lightning pace and snarling vocals match the image of fangs beared and fur flying in a full frontal assault attack of the metallic kind.

"Fist to Face" is as blunt as one would guess, being a full throttle track that slams just like...well a fist to your face of course. Subtlety is completely lost here, you see what you get, and that ends up being straight up raw and ferocious heavy metal.

"Unbreakable" has a nice chorus, "Until it Hurts" goes a more modern route and fizzles more than it finds finesse, "Little Head" seeks a good rhythm and finds it, but perhaps too late, and "Like a Rock" is another slamming hyper metallic track.

It all starts to sound somewhat the same, and Mat's voice is rough around the edges, lending a very dirty and rough feel to the proceedings. Of course, that's how it has been for nearly thirty years now, and this is what fans expect, crave and want, so who's going to change it? It's his band afterall, and that voice kind of defines Sinner no matter what kind of trend they are half heartedly chasing next. Their sound stays rather the same, identifiable and fairly unremarkable.
There were dozens of bands like this one many years ago, with Saxon coming closest to mind, but now this no frills approach to metallic tasting hard rock is becoming more extinct, making a disc like this one seem even fresher than it should. Sinner keeps plugging ahead, attempting to reach that third decade mark and pumping out albums all the while. If a Sinner disc is what you are looking for, it's here and asks to be nothing more and nothing less.

Written by Alanna
Friday, September 19, 2008
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Ratings

Alanna: 6.5/10

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