Label: Steel Panther Inc.
Release date: September 27, 2019
Producer: Jay Ruston
Album length: 35.55 min
Genre: Glam Metal
Rating: 8.0 / 10
Who else but Steel Panther? Finally, an album that clocks in under forty minutes. If only most bands stuck to that, especially the ones with a pile of records behind them that are starting to burn out on fresh ideas. But let’s be honest here. Steel Panther aren’t new to this. Even with just five studio releases, they’ve got some serious mileage on them, and they’re sure not reinventing the “Einstein” of music anymore. They never really were. They’ve always played the parody card, and this time around they keep it going with maximum creative flexibility and a vividly colorful vocabulary.
The fifth studio album doesn’t bring the same freshness and pleasant shocks as the first three, that’s for sure. Still. It’s for everyone who remembers those carefree days of the eighties and early nineties, when the world was a whole lot younger and the air was full of bubbling optimism and positive vibes. When the thought of a good party was like breathing oxygen.
Anyway. “Heavy Metal Rules” is, through and through, another card-carrying Steel Panther album. The quintet has once again spat out some seriously punchy and distinctive riffs, even if it doesn’t surprise with its ideas the way it did a few years back. It’s one more document delivering boundless fun straight into the bosom of Sunset Strip parody, aimed somewhere around the days of Ratt and Motley Crue’s glam metal masquerade, but with considerably sharper technical polish, which goes especially for Satchel’s guitar playing, where you again catch quite a few tricks inherited from the genius Eddie Van Halen. Satchel plays with a passion that isn’t far off from someone like Brad Gillis (Night Ranger). Satchel’s solos are once again a story in themselves, a decoration of the new Steel Panther album well worth special attention.
The lyrics are once again the winning poker aces with which “Heavy Metal Rules” earns its label as an album worth all your attention. Definitely for lovers of glam metal, but also of an abundance of, ahem, mammary vectors (and everything that goes with them). So it’s another album where the relevance of modern times fails and you hop into a time machine thirty years back. A catapult into the late eighties. Even the videos are deliberately directed to bring back the days when no hole or crack was safe.
The opener All I Wanna Do Is Fuck (Myself Tonight) is a phenomenal composition, rightly released as the first single, and exactly what has to sit at the start of an album like this. A track that grabs you right away, and one the band will absolutely have to play at gigs. Just imagine how it’ll feel when a hall with several thousand people is yelling in unison: “….fuck myself till the morning light….”, among other things? In fact, the released singles are the album’s strongest moments. The second one worth singling out is Always Gonna Be A Ho, which serves up the most musical hunger and captured pomp, while the third song and third single, the closing Gods Of Pussy, has the guitars really sink their teeth in and deliver the most pure-blooded metal phrase on the album. Sneaky Little Bitch borrows the idea for its riff from the Led Zeppelin classic The Ocean, which might bother some purists a bit, since the trick is obvious. Satchel, a guitar professor among other things, knows the history of rock’n’roll very well, and in his fascination with the ideas of the old-school pioneers of rock, he occasionally and unintentionally “gives in” a little while hunting for his own phrases. The band keeps its songwriting skills at a more than satisfactory level, and all four building blocks stand out in contrast. Jay Ruston’s production takes the gold medal. It delivers a full-bodied, rounded, lively and organic-sounding album! Especially when it comes to the “thickened” phrasing and the great contrast between the juicy phrases and the pulsing rhythm section. Michael Starr is once again vocally as dominantly debauched as he should be, and the album’s main magnet that locks the listener in. “Heavy Metal Rules” is a very good new Steel Panther album that keeps all the qualities these first-rate parody tightrope walkers have spoiled us with in the past. Maybe it’s missing a phrase or two that would bring more bombastic punch, but those are details.
author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Track list:
1. Zebraman (0:34)
2. All I Wanna Do Is Fuck (Myself Tonight) (3:53)
3. Let’s Get High Tonight (3:48)
4. Always Gonna Be a Ho (4:20)
5. I’m Not Your Bitch (4:04)
6. Fuck Everybody (3:40)
7. Heavy Metal Rules (3:47)
8. Sneaky Little Bitch (4:28)
9. Gods of Pussy (3:51)
10. I Ain’t Buying What You’re Selling (3:30)
Line-up:
Michael Starr – vocals
Satchel – guitar
Lexxi Foxx – bass guitar
Stix Zadinia – drums, piano
