Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Artist: Black Star Riders
Label: Nuclear Blast
Release: 2017
Length: 44:34
Rating: 3.5/5
Black Star Riders, or everything that’s left today of the legacy of the unique, inimitable heavy rock legends Thin Lizzy, of their triumphant feats of rock’n’roll pioneering and popularizing, are back with their third album, which they’ve named »Heavy Fire«.
Following its predecessor »The Killer Instinct«, this is the album Black Star Riders have now cut with the lineup untouched. The band is made up entirely of insanely sharp, polished, seasoned players from the front lines of the global hard rock map, guys who spent years forging their chops in prominent, world-famous names that helped shape the rock legacy. They carry on with the new album, which is, as expected, a kind of »post-Thin Lizzy« evolution, one that keeps going even though Thin Lizzy are no more.
Scott Gorham made peace long ago with the fact that Black Star Riders will forever be compared to the elemental trademarks of the musical rhetoric of the great Thin Lizzy. As a songwriter, Gorham soaked up most of it from his visionary mentor, the late Phil Lynott, so why would he abandon the recipe that always lit the fuse instantly? What’s interesting, though, is that this time the band has largely dropped the obligatory implant of guitar harmonies in thirds (layered over the guitar phrases), so on this front they at least partly break away from »copying« the Thin Lizzy look. You have to wait a little this time for the first song with prominent guitar harmonies in thirds. It’s only the sixth track on the album, the otherwise excellent Testify Or Say Goodbye. So the structure of the compositions keeps a rudimentary retro sound and stylistic kinship with Thin Lizzy, and once again there’s the incredibly penetrating, distinctive, Lynott-like, amazingly warm vocal of Ricky Warwick, who even allows himself a few more excursions into singing solo-sounding vocal duties. One such moment is the verse in When the Night Comes In, where the arrangement surprises with female vocal harmonies in the chorus melody, backing up Warwick’s lead vocal and effectively deepening the mood. So that’s good. We got an album that doesn’t hit one hundred percent Thin Lizzy right away, even though it’s clear it’s reaching for them the whole time. And the songs stick in your ears a bit later than was typical of the material on the previous two albums. You need to spin the album at least three times before the riffs start crawling under your skin. Not all the songs are equally strong in expression, either. On that note, the two ballads Fade and Cold War Love are a bit underwhelming, and you can miss them without trouble. True Blue Kid doesn’t really go anywhere either. These songs don’t carry the same stamp as the four opening tracks, which are very punchy, or, later in the middle, Thinking About You Could Get Me Killed and the already mentioned Testify Or Say Goodbye.
Once again, I’m bothered by the occasional overdoing of chorus repetitions, especially in the closing parts of songs, where they could have saved the listener some time. In these songs, everything important happens a touch before the clock runs out. It’s a minor point, but the remark is often fair, especially for songs like Ticket To Rise and Letting Go Of Me.
Overall, the album keeps up high-quality songwriting and flows excellently from the first minute to the last, so you won’t be short-changed on listening pleasure. There’s no heavy philosophy here. This is a new album of nicely polished, punchy, stripped-down, bold rock »sermons« with a heavy dose of »desperado machismo«, forged on the shoulders and mind of the legendary Scott Gorham and his crew in a way that, clearly, only the generation of musicians Gorham belongs to, a contemporary and former buddy of Phil Lynott, can credibly pull off. Musicians like that »don’t make ’em anymore«, and with them, the days are numbered for albums like »Heavy Fire« too. So let’s enjoy the sweet illusion a little longer that we’re listening to Thin Lizzy in 2017, even though what we’ve got is Black Star Riders.
Black Star Riders – Testify Or Say Goodbye (official video):
Lineup
Ricky Warwick – guitar, vocals
Scott Gorham – guitar
Damon Johnson – guitar
Robert Crane – bass
Jimmy DeGrasso – drums
Production
Nick Raskulinecz
Tracklist
- Heavy Fire
- When The Night Comes In
- Dancing With The Wrong Girl
- Who Rides The Tiger
- Cold War Love
- Testify Or Say Goodbye
- Thinking About You Could Get Me Killed
- True Blue Kid
- Ticket To Rise
- Letting Go Of Me
- Fade*
*… bonus track
