Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Artist: Dead Daisies, The
Label: SPV Records
Release: 2018
Running time: 45:52
Rating: 4.5/5
The Dead Daisies are a supergroup held together by super money. Its owner is Australian money mogul, airplane buff and band guitarist David Lowy. The band formed in 2012, and with the new album »Burn It Down« they’ve notched up a fourth record in just five years of existence. They’ve also got the live album »Live & Louder« in their back pocket. Burn It Down can safely be declared the best studio album The Dead Daisies have made to date.
Clearly, bringing Doug Aldrich on board while »Make Some Noise« was being made did the trick! The band has lined up a fresh batch of excellent riffs, every last one marked by huge recognizability and instant catchiness. No stumbling into the annoying »dead ends« of songwriting – The Dead Daisies win the listener over like it’s child’s play. The sound is raw, fat, live (totally concert-style) thunder and, to a degree, even fashionably grimy and crunchy. Production-wise, everything is once again right where it belongs. The explosive rhythm section lives in terrific contrast with the »toxically« dosed guitar phrases and the charismatic, pierce-you-from-a-mile-away raspy vocals of the eternally swaggering, boyishly cocky John Corabi. Aldrich and co. have obviously caught a wave of serious inspiration, and the album bursts with first-class rock’n’roll sin. It feels »stripped down«, unpolished and utterly primal. The opening track Resurrected, with its extended closing section where the band isn’t ashamed to work in a pinch of symphonic touches, already signals that the new album is a bit different this time. Notably far less debauched, more »serious«, let’s say rather darker.
The tracks grab you one after another, and quality-wise the album doesn’t slack for a second the whole way through. Compositionally it never buckles and never wavers, whether we’re talking about the punky rock’n’roll troublemaker Bitch or the songs flirting with mid-tempo riffs and time signatures, like the fiery Rise Up and Can’t Take It With You. Then there’s Judgement Day, enriched with a Southern flavor, What Comes Around, heavily weighted with blues rhetoric, and the ballad beauty Set Me Free, which in some other era, especially thanks to that verse, Prince might have declared his own Purple Rain pt. 2. The album keeps biting with the same dynamic and compositional intensity from start to finish, without easing off for a moment. The title track and Leave Me Alone are the classic hard rock earworms.
In November 2017 the band was joined by the superb, charismatic drummer Deen Castronovo, who played with AOR legends Journey between 1998 and 2015, and was also part of the backing bands of rock icons Ozzy Osbourne, Steve Vai, Paul Rodgers and Geezer Butler! The very same Deen, who is Aldrich’s colleague in Revolution Saints, is also a first-rate singer and can do a spot-on Steve Perry (Journey) when he feels like it. But the Daisies don’t need those favors, though Deen, just like Marco Mendoza, does pitch in with vocal harmonies.
The album has it all. Money is one thing, and pooled talent is another, but above all of it reigns an extraordinary chemistry that holds this band together, and on their fourth studio album it has finally paid off in full and shone with all its artistic brilliance. If you’re after a primal hard rock album, Burn It Down will take you straight back to those carefree eighties, with the difference that the production is seriously beefed up, fat and loaded. Above all, dark. Just like the strange new times of this brave new world are dark. Burn it all down!
Lineup
John Corabi – vocals, acoustic guitar
David Lowy – guitar
Doug Aldrich – guitar
Marco Mendoza – bass guitar, backing vocals
Deen Castranovo – drums, backing vocals
GUEST MUSICIAN:
Marti Frederiksen – keyboards, percussion, backing vocals
Production
Marti Frederiksen
Track list
01. Resurrected
02. Rise Up
03. Burn It Down
04. Judgment Day
05. What Goes Around
06. Bitch
07. Set Me Free
08. Dead and Gone
09. Can’t Take It With You
10. Leave Me Alone
11. Revolution*
*…. bonus track (orig. The Beatles)
