Ελληνικά
Last Updated on 09:02 PM by Giorgos Tsekas
Genre: Hard Rock/70’s Rock
Country: U.S.A.
Label: Nuclear Blast
Year: 2016
It’s been three years since the release of the debut of Texans, who, with their homonymous album had shaken up the nostalgic hard rock, the one that refuses to accept that the 70’s have left us for good for 30+ years now, and they do well not to digest that, since this nostalgia acts like a compass and not as a deterring factor of inspiration. So, it’s the second album of the band with major changes since 3/5 of the original formation has changed with the important replacement of the guitarist Tom Frank by keyboardist AJ Vincent. Scorpion Child’s two main pillars though, Aryn Jonathan Black (vocals) and Christopher Jay Cowart (guitar) are here and are in a very good moon. Lyrically speaking they are describing a story-not very original though- in which our hero travels regularly and returns sometime home to discover that his wife is cheating on him with a wealthy man of the local society, who decides to set him up by planning a murder case in order to trap him and send him to prison. In prison he is playing the game of “Acid Roulette” with inmates in order to find a way out and a version of what really happened. Essentially we are dealing with the diary of a madman (Diary of a Madman indeed), which describes this man’s life after the incident with each song narrating a month. A dark, perhaps experiential and allegorical for the lyricist, though it’s a certainly interesting concept that gives an extra point in the whole effort.
Musically speaking, perhaps because of the vocal quality, oftenly Scorpion Child have been likened to Led Zeppellin. This “label” can be cast aside from this album (here only the “Moon Tension” is reminiscent of the Titans Zeps). They have never been their clones to let the danger of remaining in the crowd’s subconscious lurk, but it’s good for these stuff to be cut out as soon as possible. There are more elements linking them to Deep Purple due to the extensive use of keys while the Heavy Metal influences seem to be gaining ground in their sound towards the early 70’s Krautrock and psychedelic rock elements of their debut. There are great choruses in “Reaper’s Danse” and “My Woman in Black” which is plucked from another time when the songs got stuck in your mind, the astonishing Zeppellin-esque “Moon Tension”, the opening track – perfect for concerts – “She Sings I Kill”. The Purple- lish “Tower Grove” and “Twilight Coven” are good, though “Survives” left me unimpressed. Nonetheless, the other songs are not inferior or fillers; they just don’t touch the same peaks as the first three I mentioned above.
The production from Chris “Frenchie” Smith is unique and the a-ma-zing cover by Rob Kimura complement a strong release that came with summers first light.
4,5/6
