Many people who listen to the kind of music James Durbin is making on this solo venture of his will hold it against him that he appeared on American Idol. They'll say it was phony, or beneath us, or any manner of other things to disregard a show, format, and scene they don't like. I won't do that. What I will do is hold it against him that he spent the last couple of years in Quiet Riot, in which time they produced some truly horrible music. I'm still not sure whether they or LA Guns are the 80s band who have put out the worst music in recent years, but it's a tight race to the bottom.
So James has a lot to do if he's going to win me over.
Starting off with "The Prince Of Metal", I'm at least pleased he has the humility not to call himself the king. I'm less pleased he's trying to ape King Diamond's style, since those piercing high notes are intolerable if you aren't the King. I don't know why it works when he does it, but no one else can get away with it. And when they leave in his voice breaking at the end of the first chorus, I'm left shaking my head. The way that same note blends into the start of the guitar solo is cool, until you notice the guitar sounds far better than James' shrill vocal. Oops.
I'm also left puzzled by the sound of the album, with the buzzing guitars sounding incredibly lo-fi. I know enough about production to know there are plenty of free plug-ins for recording software that can do a thousand times better than what we have here. It leaves the record sounding cheap.
The worst aspect of the record, however, is the guest appearance on "Kings Before You" by Fozzy frontman Chris Jericho. It's a bad move for multiple reasons; one being that Jericho's voice isn't good enough to want to spotlight him, another being that Jericho has spent 2020 as a COVID denier who played at what might be the biggest super-spreader event in The United States. That's who Durbin is tying his horse to. It's not a good look at all.
For the rest of the album, Durbin does at least prove one thing; he was not the biggest problem with Quiet Riot. While he contributed to the failure of those records, it's clear listening to this album that he was simply not the right person for that job. Singing a more metallic style, he sounds far more comfortable, even if his tone still gets on my nerves. At the very least, I know who he is listening to this album, which I wouldn't have known before.
He does write a few solid traditional metal songs, even if they are slathered with multiple coats of the thickest cliches you can imagine. "Into The Flames" and "Evil Eye" are good songs that could do something, if they just sounded better. Even the better moments here are hard to take, since the record isn't up to par from a production standpoint. There are some records you want to turn up so you can hear the details, while this is a record you want to turn down so the harsh distortion isn't as evident.
This is the sort of album that fails on the surface level, and doesn't give us enough to discover deeper down to justify the discomfort. It's still better than what he was doing in Quiet Riot, so it's proof he made the right choice from a creative standpoint, but it still falls short on every level of what I would consider a good record. Improvement is nice, but when you're still jumping to scrape the bar with your fingertips, it's faint praise.
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