Album Review: Voodoo Circle - Locked & Loaded

As music fans, we constantly compare what we are hearing now to what we have heard before. It's totally natural, and completely understandable. What isn't as easy to swallow is how we draw different conclusions to the same facts, based on nothing more than whether or not we like the people involved. Let's take Voodoo Circle as an example. In the press release that comes along with this album, they mention wanting to take the band in a more 'Zeppelin oriented' sound this time around. Hmm... isn't that exactly what people whine about Greta Van Fleet doing, minus the difference in vocal tone? I'll save you the thinking; yes, it is. When a band we find pretentious and bratty apes Zeppelin, they're fake posers. When veterans with a bit of good will in some circles do the same thing, they're exploring the roots of rock.

That's a crock, for two reasons.

The first is what I already said, namely that if we find intentionally taking on another band's persona to be contemptible, it should be for everyone. The second reason makes much of what I've already said a moot point; this album sounds absolutely nothing like Led Zeppelin. I don't know why they even mentioned that fact, because all it does is make me hear this music as a complete failure to execute what they were going for.

There is a bluesy tinge to their sound, but for the most part it's a hybrid of hard rock and melodic metal that has as much in common with the saturated guitars and backing vocals of Def Leppard as it does their stated mindset. The guitars especially have so much gain to them that any nuance in the playing, which the blues is based on, gets lost in the wash. It might sound 'heavier', but it loses all expression, and it comes across as far too polished for the era they are playing off.

There's another point of contention, at least for me. These guys are all a bit older than I am, and they grew up with this kind of simple blues-rock still hanging around. I did not, which means I find it much harder to be moved by the songwriting cliches of that time, which this album is filled with. The vocal melodies, especially, borrow heavily from the bluesy bag of tricks. Nothing about them is surprising, and while many people will like hearing the same call and response lines they've been listening to for the last fifty years, I am not entertained by it. That approach isn't memorable to me, and the guitar playing isn't filled with enough amazing riffs to make up for that.

Honestly, what this album sounds like is a band caught between two identities. There are the elements of modern European rock where Voodoo Circle has been in recent years, and elements of their Zeppelin worship, but they don't really come together. "Straight For The Heart" leaves behind any pretense of the 70s, and because its modern sound meshes with everything these guys have spent decades writing, it sounds honest and authentic. "Magic Woman Chile" doesn't just borrow Jimi Hendrix's grammar, it's a recitation of tropes that feels like the band ticking off elements of the past they think need to be included.

If Voodoo Circle made a Voodoo Circle album, it would be a solid release. The songs that sound like them are good, and I can see the appeal. When they decide to be a 70s cover band, it's not interesting, and it's not as good, frankly. This is a case of a band having an idea, and not realizing what it is they're good at. "Locked & Loaded" is an album sabotaged by a bad idea.