Black Label Society - The Blessed Hellride
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CD Details
Artist: Black Label SocietyEdition: Music CD
CD Release Date: 2003-04-22
Music Label: Spitfire
Soundtracks:
- Stoned and Drunk
- Doomsday Jesus
- Stillborn
- Suffering Overdue
- The Blessed Hellride
- Funeral Bell
- Final Solution
- Destruction Overdrive
- We Live No More
- Dead Meadow
Music reviews of The Blessed Hellride
Music Review: A pretty decent album - though somewhow forgettable.
Rating: 3 Stars
PLEASE, READ THIS REVIEW before clicking on "NO" to say that it wasn't useful, ok? I know that not-so-positive reviews tend to bother fans, but I'm trying to be impartial here. If you want to know what to expect from this album, keep yourself reading -- and just open your mind and ears if you're an unconditional fan.
First of all, I want to state that three stars doesn't mean that this is a bad album. Not at all. It is indeed pretty enjoyable, although it hasn't gone beyond "background music for driving or relaxing" in my personal ranking. Why? Because it has few hooks, few memorable moments (if any), and even fewer transcendental songs. Again, don't get me wrong. It is far from being garbage, but in my honest opinion this is anyways a somewhat overrated album.
And my fairly neutral perception about this album (which extends to BLS in general) it's not a matter of heaviness or softness or whatever. BLS just doesn't elevates me to the musical nirvana - that's all. I would like to have more syncopated riffs, more variability, more shiny stuff, more things that I would remember for years... but every time I listen to BLS they fall short to my expectations - always! While I dig two or three things from them, I also listen in them the same reiterative ideas all the time, song after song, riff after riff, solo after solo... I find nothing I could call "groundbreaking", nothing that would stand the test of time, nothing!
So, I find pathetic when people say that BLS is the future (or the present) of true heavy metal. How do you dare? What kind of music are you listen to, guys and gals? Let me tell you this: a "ballsy" attitude is not enough to produce good metal, and even being a flashy guitar player doesn't make you a great songwriter (a songwriter that will leave a mark for the eternity). A cool image, a fat guitar tone and an overwhelming stage presence are of course great ingredients, yes; but please don't compare BLS to the greatest metal bands around. It simply doesn't pass the test, period. Zakk Wylde is a very good guitar player, that's for sure, but BLS is not one of the greatest bands ever - not at all! It is simply not fair such an assertion.
See, I even think that Zakk Wylde is a tad overrated as a guitarist - now start throwing stones at me. :-) I'm myself an amateur guitar player and I can tell you two or three things about metal guitar. Ok, I do admire Zakk Wylde because the guy has his own thing and has succeeded in creating an image for himself away from the Ozzy stuff. He's one of the fastest guns around, and that's a fact. He also has a killer tone. However, I see in his style no more than some cool licks, some extreme pentatonic abuse, a wisely applied wah-wah and a bunch of well-placed squealing harmonics. No more, no less. An innovative player? Not at all. A virtuoso? Perhaps... He's at least able to copy Randy Rhoads' solos note for note, so that's already a huge accomplishment. His bag of tricks is also huge. He has a bunch of chops at hand, and he knows how to use them to impress the audience. But in my own ranking of guitarists Zakk Wylde is far away from the top, really. Take for example John Sykes -- who has a playing approach very similar to Zakk's. I conclude that Sykes is a much more interesting player and songwriter than Wylde. Or take for example George Lynch, who has chops to give away to everybody and still being one of the hottest ever. Is Zakk as great as Lynch? I don't think so... And this list could grow and grow, even if I avoid to mention the sacred cows (such as Malmsteen, Vai, Satch, MacAlpine and the likes).
So said, I'm back to my review: this is an album with some nice metal ingredients that will please the average metal fan. It also has some great flashy solos from Zakk Wylde. He's able to shred pentatonic-based phrases at the speed of light. He's also able to condiment his musical statements with some well-placed metal clichés - some tricks out from his arsenal are: tapping, slides, off-key bursts, bending, double-stops, artificial harmonics, wide finger vibrato, wide stretches and chromatic runs. We guitar geeks will therefore find here some decent material to consume. In general, nothing to kill for, but an overall well-rounded delivery. Three stars I think it is fair then. Yes, you may go for it while you're waiting for "The Next Big Thing" - which this is not, I warn you. Pretty enjoyable release - though somehow forgettable too.
Description of The Blessed Hellride
"The Blessed Hellride" was Black Label Society's fourth album, originally released in April 2003. It is considered by many to be their finest album to date with it's combination of heavy tracks like "Stoned And Drunk" and "Stillborn" with more subtle tracks such as "The Blessed Hellride" and "Dead Meadow". "Stillborn" feature backing vocals from Ozzy Osbourne and went on to be used in the game Guitar Hero: World Tour, in which Zakk also appears as a character challenging the gamer to a guitar duel.The Blessed Hellride finds former Ozzy Osbourne's guitarist and Black Label Society frontman Zakk Wylde playing all instruments bar the drums, yet retaining an intensity that Osbourne has sadly lacked for some years. Combining the bludgeoning heaviness of Black Sabbath, the Southern flavor of the Allman Brothers, and the flashy pyrotechnics of Eddie Van Halen, Wylde delivers crushing riffs and head-spinning solos throughout such highlights as the grand "Blackened Waters," the stomping "Suffering Overdue," and "Stillborn," a pained lament for dead love that features Osbourne. Wylde owes such a debut to Black Sabbath that his voice is nearly indistinguishable from Ozzy's, and he lacks subtlety, as evinced by the clattering percussion that invades the otherwise melancholic closer "Dead Meadow". Even so, this is a cut above the heavy-rock norm. --Dominic Wills
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