Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Artist: Million Dollar Reolad
Label: Frontiers Records
Release: 2012
Running time: 48:45
Rating: 3/5
Million Dollar Reload are Northern Irish stallions based in Belfast. With their new album »Sinner’s Saint« they keep gnawing away at the musical groove laid down by their studio debut »Anthems Of A Degeneration«, which slipped right past us, since it first came out as a self-release in 2008, then again in 2010 on the obscure Bulletproof Records. Well, with Million Dollar Reload’s move to the much mightier Italian label Frontiers Records, things have improved on that front too. Not just for fans of this kind of music, but above all for the band itself, because their music will now reach a much wider target audience.
Even with their debut, Million Dollar Reload made it clear that they’re a hugely talented new band that doesn’t do jokes and means business in everything they do. Rummaging through dusty archives is an awfully trendy thing these days, and Million Dollar Reload definitely don’t shy away from it either.
Picture the new album »Sinner’s Saint« as an upgraded version of the debut’s vocabulary, which already hinted back then that the band loves to draw from the blueprints of classic hard rock bands, like the blues-soaked Aerosmith, with the gloss of the in-your-face arrogance of a classic AC/DC riff, backed up by a vocal tone that leans slightly toward the late rock icon Bon Scott. The guys drench all of it in a generous helping of sleaze. The songs wear that attitude proudly, especially when a classic riff collides with punk arrogance on one side and an expertly crafted, under-the-skin catchy melody of arena-minded chorus hooks on the other. Yes. Parallels in the energetic vibe of the band’s musical vocabulary with Motley Crue or Warrant are totally on the mark. So it’s clear that Million Dollar Reload know the music of proto glam rock legends New York Dolls very well, while the production and arrangement sophistication of the likes of The Sweet is simply a target flying too high for them. Comparisons with N.W.O.B.H.M. veterans Saxon are possible too – especially the older era (early eighties), thanks to the finesse of the vocal shading, and that feeling can be deepened further by a well-chosen guitar phrase, like the one in the closing It Ain’t Over. Probably partly because English is the band’s native language.
Million Dollar Reload are excellent musicians. The feeling of playing and shaking with full balls is never missing, and that’s the thing that cockily convinces the listener to give this band a chance, even if, in terms of expression, they keep circling around, drawing inspiration from a soup that’s been boiled a thousand times. From sparkling, salty solos with a clever placement of well-tuned notes, to the penetratingly upfront stomp of the rhythmic textures, swaggering guitar phrases, the infectious charm of vocal melodies that take the lead, as already mentioned, in polished, melodically catchy choruses. The production superbly highlights the arrogance of the band’s live-sounding energy on one hand, and on the other effectively boosts the bombast. The song that most successfully combines the elements of Million Dollar Reload’s music described above is the second one on the album, Bullets In the Sky, which would have been an ultra hit in the late eighties, and today is consequently a great rock evergreen.
So Million Dollar Reload are no musical innovators. They move within well-chewed musical frameworks. But they understand them and master them to the fullest, so this album will be interesting to all fans of the bands listed in this review, and at the same time to all of you who like the new Scandinavian wave of glam rock revival. All in all, »Sinner’s Saint« is one of the nicer surprises among this year’s releases on the global rock scene.
Line-up
Phil Conlon – vocals
Andy Mackle – guitar, backing vocals
Brian Mallon – guitar, backing vocals
Kie McMurray – bass guitar, backing vocals
Sean McKernan – drums
Production
Neal Calderwood
Track list
1. Fight The System
2. Bullets in the Sky
3. Blow Me Away
4. Can’t Tie Me Down
5. Broken
6. I Am The Rature
7. Wicked
8. Smoke N Mirrors
9. Headrush
10. Pretty People
11. It Ain’t Ove
