Search - Savoy Brown :: Rock N Roll Warriors

Not Your Daddy's Savoy Brown!!

chris meesey Food Czar | The Colony, TX United States | 09/26/2003

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Kim Simmonds releases the first Savoy Brown album in four years and reinvents the group as----a metal band??? Well, hard rock at any rate. The year is 1981, and it's a very big year for rock and roll...big hair, big, outlandish costumes (just check out the sleeve photo...Is that really Kim???) and a big rock and roll sound. Gone is the blues and boogie that SB has been perfecting for 15 years, and in it's place is music that sounds like a cross between Def Lepperd and Whitesnake. But here's the biggest surprise of all: IT WORKS! Ralph Mormon (formerly of the Joe Perry project) provides suitably snotty, teen-angst vocals against a hard driving backup featuring super bassist John Humphrey. Every song roars along at ninety miles a minute except for the fine Rod-Stewartesque ballad "Lay Back in the Arms of Someone," which provides a much-needed breather at the disc's midpoint. "Cold Hearted Woman" is the album's best number, with Kim slicing and dicing his guitar over a fabulous beat. And can you beat "Got Love if You Want It" as a hormone-driven love anthem, as Ralph wails "Honey, let's get naked and crawl across that floor!" Too much! This import edition also features three bonus live tracks from a 1981 Colorado concert and they cook, with "Hellbound Train" enlivened by an excellent bass lead-in solo by the aforementioned Mr. Humphrey. (Turn up the volume on these tracks; it's a little low.) In short, if you have a younger sibling, wife, or girlfriend (or boyfriend), particularly one who came of age in the eighties, put on this album and become a warrior in Kim's rock and roll army!"