Vinnie Vincent

The debut from ex-Kiss guitar slinger Vinnie Vincent, is, well…hair metal through and through. It's got all the calling cards of a band that spent way too much gig money on Aqua-Net. You get the rockin' riff "I wanna party" tunes, the sleazy song or two ("Shoot You Full of Love"), screams, shreds, and drums galore. The nice thing about this record is that it lacks the obligatory ballad, which may have attracted a larger audience (i.e., girls) and pushed up the sales, but you gotta admire them for stickin' to the rock.

The debut from ex-Kiss guitar slinger Vinnie Vincent, is, well…hair metal through and through. It's got all the calling cards of a band that spent way too much gig money on Aqua-Net. You get the rockin' riff "I wanna party" tunes, the sleazy song or two ("Shoot You Full of Love"), screams, shreds, and drums galore. The nice thing about this record is that it lacks the obligatory ballad, which may have attracted a larger audience (i.e., girls) and pushed up the sales, but you gotta admire them for stickin' to the rock.

The Warrior story starts in 1982 with the Boston based band New England, featuring keyboard player Jimmy Waldo, bassist Gary Shea and drummer Hirsh Gardner, and how their plans to record their fourth album with Todd Rundgren were skippered when their guitarist, John Fannon, unexpectedly quit the group…

Does that high-pitched wail sound familiar? Well, odds are if you're reading this, you should know it. For Vinnie's second album, good ol' Mark Slaughter (who would soon – with Invasion bassist Dana Strum – form the even more successful and creatively named hair metal band Slaughter) takes over vocals from the departed Robert Fleischman, and while his high-pitched wails are a bit hard to take, his vocals give this record a bit more consistency than the debut. Outside of that it's kinda just more of the same. Unfortunate for Mr. Vincent given his obvious talents, this sort of "metal" that somehow thrived from 1985-1990 (or so) wasn't the type of rock that was open to too much experimentation. So what you get here is a pretty run-of-the-mill hair rock album: rockers, ballads, solos, etc.

MelodicRock has announced another archival project - the double album “Voices From The Past”, composed of songs by Jimmy Waldo (Jimmy Waldo) and Steven Rosen (Steven Rosen), which were recorded in the 80s with the participation of many stars of the Los Angeles rock scene .

Encouraged by their continued success as a touring unit, Slaughter reorganized following the tragic death of guitarist Tim Kelly with Back to Reality, which introduces new guitarist Jeff Blando. Regardless, it's still the same old Slaughter, albeit a touch heavier than they were in their hit-making prime – they're catering to hard rock radio rather than power-ballad-hungry Top 40 programmers (which actually serves them well). Still, it's knowing their audience that's kept Slaughter around this long, and that audience wants straight-ahead, melodic, meat-and-potatoes hard rock. So even if most of the music on Back to Reality will sound somewhat rote and by the numbers to listeners who have no appetite for '80s-style pop-metal in 1999, it simply wouldn't pay for the band to take any chances or alter their sound – and, actually, as Back to Reality proves, they're still pretty good at it, delivering decent songs and convincing performances demonstrating that they aren't just phoning it in. There's nothing earth-shattering here, but the level of quality is pleasantly surprising, and certainly not that far below their commercial heyday.