Fifi Larue-s/t

2007
Self Produced



"GC: Gothic Content-Some material may not be cool for all you normies". So reads the warning on the back of the self-titled disc from black clothing clad, face paint wearing goth-metal outfit Fifi Larue. Underneath all of the trappings the sound here is very much of a mid/late 1980's style. It took me a little while place the sound, but somehow this band reminds me of what would happen if Ace Frehley fronted Alice Cooper's band around 1987 and then you threw in splashes of early WASP and Detroit horror/metal outfit Halloween. Yes, front man Fifi does sound Ace Frehley which was a little startling because you don't hear a lot of vocalists who sound like Ace. There are also a number of musical guest stars including Chris Holmes (WASP), CC Deville (Poison), Roxy Petrucci (Vixen), Eric Singer (KISS) and Kerri Kelli (Alice Cooper). Many of the songs are basic and go in between hard rock and metal. I would have like to have seen them use a little more variation here and there, but generally the vocals and the straight for the throat approach show that they have some fire for what they are trying to accomplish. When I first saw that there fifteen tracks I considered that to be rather ambitious, but unfortunately the album may have been a little more concise and balanced if they have just done around ten or eleven. Track eight "So blue without you" is the first of a block of three tracks that serves to sideline this album for a while. It's a rather surprisingly light and slightly bland ballad that really had me scratching my head as to why they thought it fit. It's followed up by a very average rendition of the Door's People are strange. The last of the three consecutively weak tracks is another cover and this time it's a very lukewarm version of Lennon's Imagine. They seem to have been on a roll before this and these tracks seem like filler that only serve to make me re-consider what I was thinking about this band. However they get the ball rolling well enough to finish out the album. The potential is here for most part although they could use a little more complexity in their songs and maybe even be a little heavier, but still a decent album.



www.myspace.com/fifilaruetheband