I have been really enjoying this album, although I kept wondering why on earth it reminded me of a very heavy metal version of Stryper, and it was only reading the PR that I realised this is the project from Tracii Guns and Michael Sweet. Tracii has been around the scene for decades, as has Michael, and he has obviously been enjoying getting heavier in recent years as he has also had projects with George Lynch, while also getting softer with Boston, and anyone who has been lucky enough to see Stryper play knows their shows are much heavier than they are on album. With Michael on vocals, Tracii provides bass and guitar, with the line-up on the album completed by Tracii’s old L.A. Guns bandmate, Adam Hamilton.

While I have enjoyed some of L.A. Guns’ releases, I have never thought Phil Lewis to be the best singer in the world (although I confess to buying Girl’s debut album when it came out in 1980 – Phil Collen certainly did well for himself!), while musically they have not always been the best either, but Tracii does a great job here with Michael obviously relishing the task at hand. Here we have a band who are looking back mostly to British metal such as Sabbath, Ozzy and Priest, with the Dio-style influences coming through mostly in the vocal style as opposed to the music. The lyrics may not be what Tony and Geezer would be used to playing against, but one can imagine them happily sitting in on “In Grace We’ll Find Our Name” which is chunky and extremely riff heavy with a pace which is very doom indeed. Overall this is a very enjoyable album which is often much heavier than I would normally expect from this label, and anyone wanting to hear both Tracii and Michael taking their music in a different direction and creating something worthy should give this a listen.

Rating: 7/10

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