Author: Peter Podbrežnik
Artist: Black Star Riders
Label: Nuclear Blast
Released: 2013
Running time: 45:54
Rating: 4.5/5
To a layperson who doesn’t follow the classic rock scene day in, day out, the name of American hard rockers Black Star Riders surely says nothing concrete, other than maybe prompting a thought along the lines of ‘ah, yet another hard rock outfit with a biker name, glorifying in its lyrics the fast life of your average, grubby motorcycle desperado on dusty highways winding through endless prairies’. While musing like that, they wouldn’t even be all that far off about the lyrics of most of this ‘new-old’ band’s songs, but they’d completely miss the most important fact: behind this name is really a group that, until recently, played on concert stages under the name of the legendary Irish classic rockers Thin Lizzy. Their commander today is a properly gray-haired but still sprightly Scott Gorham, longtime Thin Lizzy guitarist and member of the classic lineup of this originally Irish band, whom above all the unforgettable, sadly long-departed singer and bassist Phil Lynott wrote into legend. At least on a symbolic level, the first Black Star Riders album, with the fitting title »All Hell Breaks Loose«, is dedicated to him.
After Lynott’s death, Gorham, with the help of singer and guitarist John Sykes (ex-Tygers Of Pan Tang, Whitesnake), kept Thin Lizzy ‘artificially’ alive from 1996 onward as a live attraction, but most longtime fans just couldn’t come to terms with this ‘sacrilege’. Thin Lizzy without Phil Lynott are, much like Queen without Freddie Mercury, a band with the same name as before but without the soul and the genuine fire. Gorham, of course, always saw it differently and was convinced that Phil would have looked approvingly on keeping the memory of his famous musical legacy alive onstage. And plenty of people who weren’t even born at the height of their success got the chance to hear some of the best classics from the story of this legendary Irish outfit live for the first time, which gave Gorham’s band at least some legitimacy.
A somewhat bigger problem came up after Sykes left, when Gorham suddenly got the itch to make new music that would sound at least roughly the way Thin Lizzy sounded with Lynott in the golden days. To that end he ‘drummed up’ some of his old Thin Lizzy pals, though in the end only longtime touring bassist Marco Mendoza stayed on, since original Lizzy drummer Brian Downey and former keyboardist Darren Wharton, for various reasons, passed on joining the new project. Meanwhile the band, which prudently took the name Black Star Riders, after the gang of outcasts in the film Tombstone, was rounded out by singer and occasional guitarist Ricky Warwick, who took on the toughest job of replacing Lynott on vocals, guitarist Damon Johnson, who joined Gorham in weaving the famous dual guitar and vocal harmonies, and drummer Jimmy DeGrasso.
With this lineup, Black Star Riders recorded their debut »All Hell Breaks Loose« this year, and at its best it strongly recalls classic Thin Lizzy. For that you can mainly thank Warwick’s vocal kinship with Lynott and the witty guitar lines of the Gorham and Johnson pairing, who happily carry on the tradition of the old, mostly excellent Lizzy guitar duets, often with triple harmonies as well. Still, Black Star Riders deftly bring a few hard rock ideas all their own into their sound, while the production of »All Hell Breaks Loose« under Kevin Shirley’s baton is deliberately tuned to the pulse of the seventies, with the guitars pushed way up front, though Mendoza’s melodic bass lines are anything but shy throughout.
The opening tracks on »All Hell Breaks Loose« nail the pulse of some indispensable Thin Lizzy classics, which speaks volumes about their overall quality and also means they break the ice superbly between the album and the average, rather skeptical longtime fan, and there were quite a few of those before this record dropped. The Gorham and Johnson guitar tandem runs like a well-oiled machine, while Warwick fits convincingly into Lynott’s vocal shoes, so that already on the title opener, »All Hell Breaks Loose«, that authentic Thin Lizzy magic takes over time and again, the kind that’s been missed ever since they released their last studio album, »Thunder And Lightining«, in 1983. The lyrics are also, as mentioned, in a ‘recognizable style’, with Black Star Riders presenting themselves as a gang of grubby desperados chasing ‘chicks’ on their bikes and. The emphatically melodic »Bound For Glory« comes off especially ‘retro’, really sounding like some classic Thin Lizzy anthem from their ‘romantic days’ somewhere in the late seventies, even if the main guitar phrase quite resembles the one from the Whitesnake classic »Guilty Of Love«. The triple harmonies especially bring back the ‘good old days’.
»Kingdom Of the Lost« is especially interesting: with the help of pipes it contains elements of Irish folk rock, and with its patriotic lyrics, in which the Americans for a change bow to Ireland (well, truth be told, a sizable chunk of the US East Coast is made up of descendants of Irish immigrants), it’s above all another fine tribute to Lynott’s legacy and his love of Irish folk music, while the guitar phrases are once again thoroughly iconoclastic. Although Warwick’s vocal timbre strongly recalls Lynott, the difference is still clearly noticeable, which is a good thing, since it means this isn’t a perfect copy with no soul of its own. Rather more formulaic hard rock, less dynamic and therefore less interesting, is the punchy »Bloodshot« with its nonchalant chorus, but all fans of melodic and creative guitar variations will surely enjoy it anyway. On »Kissin’ The Ground«, Black Star Riders use punchy yet dynamic guitar passages, magnificently backed by a massive rhythm section, to shape an absolute earworm of a melody. This is one of those tracks where the band most convincingly merges its own unique songwriting ‘self’ with the influence of classic Thin Lizzy, while Warwick’s vocal approach this time sounds a lot more ‘American’.
»Hey Judas« has a subtle, almost balladic intro, until on the wings of scorching guitar passages and mighty drum fills it turns into a melodic hard rocker with an uplifting message. The wonderful triple harmonies will once again have all the classic rock dreamers licking their lips, especially those who in the seventies breathed and lived for the pioneering heavy rock bands that included Thin Lizzy. On »Hoodoo Voodoo«, which has a seriously fun chorus where the band once again sounds like a gang of outcasts, Black Star Riders work in some blues mystique too, mainly through melancholic guitar variations. The epic »Valley Of The Stones«, where the lyrics have the (biker) gang exploiting the fall of empires to let their hedonistic lifestyle run wild, likewise recalls some Lizzy evergreens, which goes especially for the emphatic, triple-harmony-spiced, melodic chorus.
On »Someday Salvation«, one of the more ‘simple’ creations on »All Hell Breaks Lose«, Warwick once again successfully captures quite a bit of Lynott’s vocal and lyrical approach in a song about the everyday struggle to survive of a ‘simple street rebel’, and the backing vocal lines especially shine. »Before The War«, another track with a very good, distinctly melodic chorus, has pronouncedly militant rhythmic nuances, which goes especially for the drums. Its ambience and lyrics will once again take many a listener back, nostalgically, to the romantic Thin Lizzy days. »Blues Ain’t So Bad« is another interesting hard rock experiment with pronounced blues improvisations on guitars, with Mendoza’s rattling bass lines way up front this time, while the band once again shines especially on the chorus. It’s another of those album tracks where the band blends the classic, recognizable Lizzy style with a more modern approach to hard rock very well. The special edition also includes a bonus track, »Right To Be Wrong«, a rather formulaic hard rocker that’s a notch less interesting than most of the ‘official’ material on the album, so it’s just as well the band released it ‘only’ as a bonus.
»All Hell Breaks Loose« proves with surprising success that ‘the boys are back in town’, even if under a different name and in a thoroughly ‘American edition’. That’s still a lot more than most longtime Thin Lizzy loyalists expected, since they’d braced themselves for the blackest of scenarios. The decision to introduce Black Star Riders to listeners under a new name paid off handsomely, because it let them focus fully on making music and record a very good album, marked by the atmosphere and often the songwriting approach of classic Thin Lizzy, which is just what Scott Gorham supposedly wanted all along, all while taking care not to somehow tarnish the memory of Phil Lynott. For the legendary guitarist, who gathered the right people around him for this big undertaking, a seriously tough mission, with one major compromise on the name, turned out really well, so he can be almost certain that Phil would have been happy listening to »All Hell Breaks Loose« had he still been alive.
Lineup
Ricky Warwick – vocals, guitar
Scott Gorham – lead guitar, rhythm guitar
Damon Johnson – lead guitar, rhythm guitar
Marco Mendoza – bass guitar
Jimmy DeGrasso – drums, percussion
Production
Kevin Shirley
Track List
1. All Hell Breaks Loose
2. Bound For Glory
3. Kingdom Of the Lost
4. Bloodshot
5. Kissin’ the Ground
6. Hoodoo Voodo
7. Valley of the Stones
8. Someday Salvation
9. Before the War
10. Blues Ain’t So Bad
