Unfeasibly young, unfeasibly talented. Unfeasibly derivative.
Wunderkinds
Crooked X prove that if you're good enough, you're old enough.
Nurtured and produced by the legendary Spencer Proffer, who's run his own Media / PR company for many years with business partner, Doc McGhee,
Crooked X the band and
Crooked X the album are making a considerable impact.
Proffer produced Quiet Riot's 'Metal Health' (1983), a 9 million selling debut album, so he knows what he's doing. In addition, several tracks are produced by Michael (Skid Row, Great White,
Dokken etc etc) Wagener.
With that kind of backing, you really got to hit the ground running.
The only problem is this : As you would expect for a teenage band, arguably still in their formative years, their influences loom large, both in songwriting and performance. You'll hear many hard'n'heavy eighties' metal bands stalking the grooves of this debut. Mainly Metallica. But there are others skulking about in the shadows.
One of the better tracks, one that no doubt lyrically encapsulates the band's aspirations, is
'Rock'n'Roll Dream'. You don't need any more than a cursory examination to detect a strand of AC/DC's, or maybe The Angels' DNA running through this song.
But yes, if you want to lift somebody's sound, lift it from the best.
Bulldozing riffs abound on this album, backed up by beefy rhythms and laced with razoring axework. Forest French, singer, guitarist, sounds suitably mature, even if the lyrics sometimes don't. Age hasn't quite tuned his voice to a unique, easily identified frequency. But he's clearly making the right kind of progress, currently going through a young Hetfield / Kroeger phase.
And you can see Proffer and Wagener have aimed for an audience that's spread through a diverse demographic, by delivering a diluted post grunge sound that incorporates all the best bits of classic metal.
Most of the time it works.
The riffs get a bit thrashy, but not too garage on
'Adrenaline' and '
You Gotta Bleed', but sound remarkably weighty and tight on the hulking
'Gone' and the album's memorably melodic standout track,
'Time Is Now'.
'Nightmare' is appropriately Alice Cooper-ish.
Interestingly, '
Death Of Me', the only track produced by rising star, Scott Cooper, shows a welcome lightness of touch while simultaneously pointing the way ahead for the band.
Yet another band to watch.
Written by
Brian Friday, April 17, 2009
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