THE BLACK LIGHTS - Rock Awesome CD
From Central Scotland, this band have been around in one form or another, since 2006 and the good news is that the hard work has finally paid off – for they have produced a really solid, satisfying, hi-energy, rip-roaring slice of Classic Rock in the form of this album. Throughout the album you'll find everything you'd want from a hard rock album – great riffs, hot leads, powerful rhythms and passionately sung vocals, all on tracks that really catch fire. Things kick off with a healthy dose of guitar feedback before the drums crunch in, the guitar riff sparks into life, the vocalist wails and a searing lead guitar enters as the bass pound underneath. The singer lets go with an urgent sounding vocal as the pace accelerates and the song drives forward and just rocks. The verses are executed with buckets of emotion as a roaring 'n' rockin' ride ensues and you're immediately caught in its wake. From there on, through the crunch and drive of “In The City”, where the guitars-fuelled riffs really take off on a song that's once more got rock running through its veins, via the equally solid and hard-rocking “Season Of The Bitch” with its superb vocal verse-as-hook arrangement leading into a huge-harmony-laden chorus and powered by more furious riffing, to the more staccato rock approach of “Heartbreaker”, with its high-flying vocal set above the stumbling acceleration of the rhythms and the electric intensity of the guitar riffs, it's all one wild ride through a world of totally satisfying rock and metal. “Ready For Love” has a riff-as-hook arrangement, while the vocal is no less impassioned as the guitars roar and the effect is more like a much more raw UFO in action. “Salvation” opens with a classic guitar riff as the band kick in, the rhythms pound, the guitars circle overhead and the vocal is, initially, slightly more subdued, but soon rises to another angst-ridden peak of solid singing with an urgency that fits like a glove as the song moves into something of a chorus, fuelled by another unforgettable guitar riff, and one gem of a song. “Headfuck”, nothing to do with the Wildhearts,I hasten to add, is, initially, slightly more restrained, but soon rises into an adrenaline-fuelled chorus as the two interweave, again, that classic UFO feel coming into play on bits of the riffing, but by and large remaining a contemporary slice of Classic Rock as it all drives into the heat of the horizon on a road of electric guitars and red hot rhythms, the vocalist really delivering the goods throughout on another sizzler of a song. The album ends with “Money” and completes the pattern of the album with another solid, straight-ahead slice of hard rockin' heaven. So, from start to finish it's a rockin' ride all the way and you can't help but get into a metal album that delivers the goods exactly as you like it – red hot, raw and ready to rock.