Artist: Lizards, The
Label: Hyperspace Records
Released: 2006
Rating: 5/5
Does anyone out there miss the seventies? “Against All Odds” is a brand-new riff monster. A riff megalomaniac! Retro seventies !?!? No wonder, since it sails against the wind, against all the winds of “mainstream”. Why have I had this album on nonstop since last August and still I’m late with the review? Because even if I kept spinning it for another year, I couldn’t pin the whole thing down any more vividly. Why? Because there are albums that are just albums, and then there are albums that carry the word “eternal” in front of the word album!
This is a complete upgrade of “Cold Blooded Kings”. In the progressive sense. Accordingly, the tracks are stretched out with top-notch “jams” and sudden tempo changes, which gives the album the quality of a high-dynamics product! We’ll go through the tracks one by one, since these are varied, self-contained little stories inside one single story.
1.) I’m No Good can boast the primal quality of eruptive Zeppelin-style erotica. Of course, it’s all about women. How bitter is that guitar riff and how sweet is the pain! Straight to the heart of it, no detours!
2.) Next comes a tale cut from a totally different cloth, Can’t Fool Myself! Picture You Fool No One by Deep Purple, played with the raw, original grit of Grand Funk Railroad. A speeded-up funky rhythm, a huge contrast between the vocals and the “groove-d up” bass line, and in between a sporadically wild Klein with Zeppelin riffing, and Bobby Rondinelli’s cowbell chimes in. Naked, stripped-down “heavy funk drive”! The track is wrapped in a warm blanket of Hammond organ. A classic “seventies hard rock” pulser with the intellect of a progressive touch. The most progressive song on the record and definitely one of the album’s peaks! In rhythm and atmosphere the track also nods to early Carlos Santana. Magic! What takes your breath away is above all the atmosphere, which swells gradually and spontaneously through the song, lifted especially high by the instrumental collage of a quartet of musicians who are literally digging in with total commitment. The atmosphere recalls the swell of the stormiest sea!
3.) On A Wire is a trip to the bluesy funk rock heaven of Trapeze or Free. Pay attention to the duet on the chorus. Hear how the vocals bloom in an instant. That’s DiMeo and none other than the most illustrious Mr. Glenn Hughes in a duet!
4.) The funky instrumental jam Planck Time, with harmonica front and center, is an excellent change of mood and shows off the band’s witty side!
5.) After it comes the creepy, black-hued ballad Ariel, opened by the chilling, sinister sound of a harpsichord, and even when DiMeo’s vocal harmonies finally join in, those spine-tingling feelings never let up. A superb build-up of mood, a whole series of preludes!
6.) That flows masterfully into My Dark Angel. Now the contrast comes from Rondinelli’s explosive “a la Bonzo” line, brought to life by a funky bass, while orchestral arrangements build most of the mood and melody on the other side. In this track DiMeo simply confirms why he is, quite simply, the strongest there is in the kind of music The Lizards write. His approach is simply unmatched in energy, in delivery and in production, compared to what he does with Riot. It’s the most melancholic moment on the record and in many ways the most emotional too. Somewhere in the middle the string arrangements suddenly slide into an “a la Zepp – Kashmir” motif, into which another wild Klein guitar solo spills over. Dark Zeppelin eroticism? Yes. The perfect comparison!
7.) Bad Luck Is Come To Town is a new funkoid fairy tale, atmospherically closest to On A Wire.
8.) Next up is another one of those magical moments on the record that are simply tailor-made for seasoned musicians like The Lizards. It’s the ballad Revelation No. 9., resting on piano lines. No sugar, and decidedly mature! Once again there are fitting, contrasting arrangements on violins! Glenn Hughes himself definitely brought a few of his own ideas here, since his current studio album “Music For The Divine” (2006) is similarly seasoned with orchestral touches. Hughes builds the mood of the song up with his soul wizardry, then comes another electric explosion with a Klein solo and an unexpected jump in dynamics, yet everything turns together so seamlessly that it couldn’t fit any better. You true seventies lovers will know it: you’ll get goosebumps all over your body every time this spins in your headphones.
9.) A funky R & B detour with Take The Fall, and again you can feel Glenn’s contribution of ideas, especially in the chorus. A fusion of funk with elements of heavy metal and hard rock under the hot baton of passion! The instrumental part is once more something special! Pay attention to the subtlety of the first instrumental section, where the guitar solo is laid through a thin, shimmering “sustain” effect that sits deep in the production background of the soundscape, while a gentle piano melody floods the foreground. Then a sudden outburst of raw guitar chopping draped in Hammond! Yes ladies and gentlemen, this is how it’s done at The Lizards!
10.) Up The Stairs is a special story, stylistically closest to the “disco funk” lines of the seventies. The track was written by Randy Pratt back in the eighties. Pratt has funk grafted onto his soul!
11.) And that’s not all!!! Here’s Eleven now – the eleventh in the lineup! With “a la Barry White” “seventies disco” string arrangements! A mid-tempo track that masterfully discharges the wound-up voltage the album’s atmosphere has built to this point!
12.) The Arrival Of Lyla is set up for the closer on a “major-key” line and carries a touch of Cheap Trick’s charm.
That’s the “short version”. This is simply an album you can listen to endlessly, and it rewards you with every single spin. It’s loaded with emotion, eroticism, passion, longing. Of course the lyrics revolve around women! So it’s an album for everyone who suffers/we who suffer in love, to console ourselves through the rage of mourning on “Against All Odds”. It’s an album that combines, in a one-of-a-kind way, a solid riff component, the subtlety of vivid moods (let’s not forget the soul of Glenn Hughes), and an added layer of unpredictability in unexpected, dynamic shifts of theme. At the same time it’s the best vocal performance of Mike DiMeo’s career, and the contribution of the keyboard arrangements themselves is breathtaking in its polish! Throughout, the album carries the most honest air of spontaneity. Everything on it is put together so that it honestly couldn’t be any better. It’s a classic masterclass in seventies hard rock. It feels as if The Lizards took a time machine and embraced, in the most elegant way possible, the great days of the distant rock past. “Against All Odds” is the band’s most progressive album so far, in the experimental sense, in the degree of exploratory freedom, which is indeterminable (and in a way therefore boundless). The Lizards set a new evolutionary milestone in the band’s overall musical image, as well as in the image of its spirit, and a few quality steps up at that. The primal face of “Cold Blooded Kings” is now upgraded with the progressive, adventurous allure of the long-gone year 1974! The (s)explosive hard rock album of the year! One more, please!
Lineup
Mike Di Meo – vocals, keyboards
Patrick Klein – guitar
Randy Pratt – bass guitar, harmonica
Bobby Rondinelli – drums
GUEST MUSICIAN:
Glenn “Big Poppa” “The Voice Of Rock” Hughes – vocals (tracks #3, #8, #9 and #10)
Production
Patrick Klein & Randy Pratt
Track list
1. I’m No Good
2. Can’t Fool Myself
3. On a Wire
4. Planck Time
5. Ariel
6. My Dark Angel
7. Bad Luck Is Come to Town
8. Revelation No. 9
9. Take the Fall
10. Up the Stairs
11. Eleven
12. The Arrival of Lyla
Running time: 67.11
