Grimmstine-s/t

Self-produced

2008





So much has changed since the 1980's. Metal vocalists who were hitting all kinds of notes back then oftentimes are not the same now. It's just natural that age catches up with you and singers can certainly suffer from this. Some vocalists lose a lot of the range they once had, while some only lose a little of their edge. Some singers like Bruce Dickinson and John Bush actually sound almost as good as they did two decades ago. Absolutely nobody sounds better than they did two decades ago or do they? Well that's what I thought until I heard the Steve Grimmett Band's 2007 release "Personality Crisis". I liked Grimmett back in the 1980's when he was in Grim Reaper, but he could be over the top with his screams. However on "Personality Crisis" he showed a control over his voice that had escaped him before and he had become a much better singer because of that control. For this project the band name was take from the last names of singer Grimmett and guitarist/producer Steve Stine. The styles represented here vary between hard rock and metal. One classic influences like Iron Maiden and Grim Reaper as well as some modern sounds. The feel is slightly uneven and they bounce around between the sounds with one song being a style and the next being very different. We get some gritty bone shaking metal, but there are ballads here that actually have touches of very commercial hard rock tinged with AOR edges. Grimmett's voice is consistently rock solid so that helps bring some stability to the album. The music is tight and to the point. There are a whopping fifteen tracks on this disc. While quantity can be great, I got a sense that this album would have been more concise if they cut off the last five tracks. Those last five songs are all decent, but almost all of them are far more mellow than the bulk of the album. As a whole this album is a good offering for sure, but perhaps not as focused as it could have been. Still fans of Steve Grimmett will surely want to check it out.



www.myspace.com/grimmstine