Dead Lucky
Sons of Lazarus

I suppose you have to be dead lucky to be sons of Lazarus and still be alive as you would have to be very old. This is the first album of this lucky band from South Africa and it certainly looks the part of the standardised heavy rock stuff and the label keeps reminding me to check out the heavy rock album of 2015 – that is not a small claim. One has to wonder how they can come up with that, they year is not half over and have they even heard every heavy rock album released in 2015, let alone all that are going to be released during the remainder of the year. I am always dubious and also a bit annoyed with such claims, how the hell can they be objective about something they are releasing themselves?

Musically it is heavy rock sure enough, I cannot recall if I have reviewed any album within the genre but if I have odds are that it is at least equally good. This is hardly ground-breaking stuff and the singer is quite poor, sort of reminds me of an ill Lemmy Kilmister. Fact is that the album song-writers could just as well been named Kilmister, Danzig or any other name involved with those bands who was pioneering this genre back many decades ago. I have heard better productions and the variation isn’t much either, the tracks number a dozen and the playing time is near three quarters of an hour. Stylewise there isn’t much to take notice of here, heavy rock is what it is – no fancy stuff just heavy rock.

I don’t think that this is a particularly good album, it will most certainly not be amongst the candidates for best album of the genre 2015, if it is the genre must have been awfully bad this year. The songs are decent but they lack energy, they lack emotion and rebellion – all things you need to make good music within this genre. What these guys do have been done to death decades ago and it was pretty daft then and it is just as daft (if not more) now. I don’t really see who is the targeted audience of this band the nostalgics will just think it was better in the past and those looking for something new and exciting will not be excited either- so who is it for? Is it just a band realising a dream, then fair enough but don’t expect me to sing their praises.

In the end I think that this album is quite okay but somehow I doubt that they will ever make any major impression on the musical world. It is relatively well made but as I stated before, it lacks that little extra that makes it a strong album. The thing is that the nostalgics might find it somewhat appealing but most will just give it a shot and then dismiss it for not taking flight. The thing is that they may be revived like Lazarus at a later date and do something better but unfortunately this album is better just forgotten.

HHHHHHH