Armored Saint-La Raza

Metal Blade
2010


Towards the top of my list of most anticipated albums of 2010 was this album, Armored Saint's first in over ten years. This band hasn't had the smoothest journey over the years as they were kicked off Chrysalis records, Dave Pritchard passed away and John Bush left for Anthrax (okay, good for him, but bad for Armored Saint). Despite all that they marched on at least until Bush left in 1992. They disbanded rather than go on without him, but he hooked back up with his Armored Saint pals in 2000 for "Revelation". All the drama is recent years with Anthrax and their musical chairs situation at vocalist had fans thinking that another Armored Saint album might eventually happen. Fortunately is has come to fruition and despite the long wait we have finally gotten another Saint album. To be honest I was letdown by "Revelation" as it was too basic for my liking and lacked some bite. Enough of the past let's get at the new album. My first two thoughts on this album as a whole are that first it's much in closer in style to "Symbol of salvation" than "Revelation" was. It's also an album of two halves as far as quality goes, because the first half is much stronger than the second half. Not sure why it was set up that way, but the heavy hitters are at the beginning at the last five songs include some more different sounds and some dead space. "Loose cannon" and "Left hook from right field" are very much in the mold of this band's established sound only with a bit more groove. "Black Feet" and "Bandit country" offer up some different ideas that this band hasn't shown before, but they sit a little longer than they needed too. "Little Monkey" was the only song on the album that reeks of filler. The pace is alright, but they are not pushing to hard and the lyrics sound like the kind whiny finger pointing that's used more by Anthrax than by Armored Saint. The album as a whole wasn't as heavy as I was expecting, but they do take more chances that they have in the past. Not all of the ideas work and not all are fleshed out enough, but it's still fine effort. My expectations were high and this album didn't live up to those expectations entirely. Still it's very much in the style of their sound and most of the songs hit enough to be worthwhile. Likely it's an album I will keep playing throughout the year and it will continue to grow on me.