Artist: Lady's First
Release: 2006
Rating: 3/5
“911” the date marking the start of the Western civilization’s decline – the end of US dominance, the end of US tyranny over planet Earth? A concept that has been stirring up Earth’s inhabitants for years now and has been used in quite a few musical works.
Heavy metal rockers Lady’s First! The debut. First off, I have to praise the lovely, fresh-smelling booklet, with beautiful color contrasts and cohesive motifs, as if it came from EMI and not from the band’s own blood and sweat. Lady’s First are yet another one of those bands whose very presence proves that metal is getting more and more popular on Slovenian soil. Let’s just hope we’re on the eve of a boom that the domestic labels will back too, even though these highly talented, consistently overlooked 20-year-old “axe-slingers” of Slovenian garages, who hit a level of technical maturity on par with 30-year-olds of my generation, deserve to be compared with the world and not with the local chicken coop! I hope that’s their goal.
Lady’s First lean on the legacy of the eighties. The riffs are open, and expression takes a back seat to the sense of melody-building that’s at the center of the band’s attention. The guys string together interesting riffs, laced with a gorgeous mix of three-part harmonies, for which Thin Lizzy set the standards and Iron Maiden built on them, and the tracks don’t go without classic eighties solos – once again we’re at Iron Maiden. Still, the whole thing doesn’t remind you of that band. It’s cited as an influence here, which really isn’t hard to figure out. The punchy ballad Way Of The Old, with the tempo in its pre-chorus (bass line/drums), pulls toward Nothing Else Matters (Metallica). The guys are technically superbly equipped and devilishly convincing in the performance. The songs flow nicely at their core, the riffs are expressive, the transitions polished, and the guys keep a common thread running through the record. The ideas are mature. The keyboards are tasteful and busily lift the mood of the songs and the dynamics of the sound. The record’s highlights are, first and foremost, the faster numbers, and the first of those is the furious Lf, as if they were picking up the legacy of bands like Liege Lord, CJSS, even early Testament or Fates Warning, in short, the American answer to the NWOBHM boom. The track is one of the strongest compositions on the record and a real metal anthem, with all the potential to claim a spot as an iron-clad staple in the set lists of live shows! In the three punchy ballads, the guys get close to melodic hard rock elements in the choruses, especially thanks to the added keyboards. As compositions, they lack absolutely nothing. And then comes the excellent shock/hair rocker High Machine with the “drive” of W.A.S.P. galloping. In the vocal harmonies of the chorus they even brushed up against the AOR tradition. And that’s not all! A sleazy riff and a hellish rocker’s rush toward the end of the album with The Game. Then it’s followed by a rerun of the song Nisi ti in an “unplugged” version, which, interestingly, burns a lot hotter than the original, while the flamenco solo “tricks” wittily take the song up a notch.
The album’s minus is the production, which is very superficial in places. This isn’t the first album of its kind, by young bands of this kind in Slovenia. You simply have to understand that bands are severely limited financially, and usually barely scrape together enough for a cheap mixing desk, let alone paying for a recording studio and a producer. This is Slovenia, sadly! So, for instance, the guitar riffs sit too far back, instead of widening the spectral picture of the soundscape, into which the bass line and drums could then have fitted in more intensely and with more depth! The vocals, which are completely on point and justify their role in the band, carry an obscure garage sound that would belong in old school or NWOBHM, which Lady’s First have outgrown, though. They simply bring so much melody and pomp that they deserve more than a garage sound! So with this kind of production, even if not optimal, a band like Metal Steel would have pulled it off much better. The vocal harmonies don’t really shine in the songs either. That’s exactly why the song Lf stands out in particular, because this kind of production suits its more aggressive look best.
Lady’s First are melodic metallers who like to flirt with elements of melodic hard rock. With the right approach to sound production, their melodies could really come alive in bombast and atmosphere. Since the tracks are diverse and this album has something interesting and appealing for just about everybody, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to lean toward an arena-style production à la Def Leppard in the punchy ballads and in songs like, say, the opening 911. But for something like that you need experience and, above all, money! By the way, melodic hard rock is in steady expansion today. More and more young Scandinavian bands are putting it to good use, like Brother Firetribe, Leverage and Platitude. Worth thinking about, guys. Anyway, this is an album that’s a hugely promising start for Lady’s First and worth all the attention, especially on the songwriting and performance side, and with it the guys show they can successfully claim a niche of their own on the Slovenian horizon. The band has potential, it has aces up its sleeve, so let’s hope they cash them in successfully and build on them.
Lineup
Domen Guzelj – vocals
Tomaž Frelih -guitar, backing vocals
Miha Oman – guitar, backing vocals
Simon Carman – bass
Miha Plesničar – drums
Production
Lady’s First
Tracklist
1. 911
2. Criminal
3. Way of the Old
4. Lady
5. Nisi ti
6. Lf
7. Prazna cesta
8. High Machine
9. The Game
10. Nisi ti (unplugged)
Album length: 43.40
