Warrant-Rockaholic

Frontiers Records
2011


In all honesty I specifically requested this promo with the sole purpose of giving it a scathing review. After hearing Warrant's horrible 2006 offering Born Again (with Jaime St. James on vocals) I fully expected that Rockaholic would follow in the same footsteps and be another pile of crap. I even told Mark that this was going to be one craptastic album of throwaway hard rock. Time for me to eat crow. Rockaholic is dare I say a good hard rock offering from Warrant. With Robert Mason now on vocals the band looks to make a comeback in a world where hard rock is as dead as the dinosaurs. Being that I'm not as much as a hard rock fan as Mark is (shocker!) I went to my friend for info on Robert Mason's background. I knew he was with Lynch Mob but beyond that I was at a dead end. So, with that I'll quote Mark "He was on their (Lynch Mob) second album which was the self-titled Lynch Mob in 1992 and then came back in 2003 to do Revolution and he was on Evil:Live which came out that same year. He has frequently been a journeyman vocalist. He did one album with Cry of love, one with the James Byrd group, one with Silent Witness. His most steady work was in recent years he did three albums with Big Cock with guitarist David Henzerling (David Michael Phillips of King Kobra) before leaving them to go to Warrant". So there you have it. Thanks Mark for the down low. The rest of the band (Jerry Dixon – Bass/Vocals, Erik Turner – Rhythm Guitar/Vocals,Joey Allen – Lead Guitar/Vocals and Steven Sweet – Drums/Vocals) joins Mason in delivering an album that should please Warrant fans of old while surprising people (like yours truly) who were never big into the "Down Boys". Now right off the bat let me mention that there is one major drawback with this album and that is all the ballads. Not that ballads are a bad thing it is just that during the moments when this album starts getting a groove and kicking it out of nowhere some ballad comes and disrupts the flow. If my memory serves correct there were three of them. I suppose you can't have a Warrant album without them but come on guys! It is 2011 not 1989! Moving on though starting the album off in a good way is the rocker "Sex Ain't Love". Right from the opening track you can tell Robert Mason has found his fit."Innocence Gone" is next and is a decent enough rock number. Same goes for the more mellow "Snake". "Dusty's Revenge" has nice harmonies although it sounds quite a bit like Bon Jovi's western run. While there is nothing wrong with it the number just seems out of place on the album. "Home" is a ballad and the album's first single. It has 1980s written all over it. "What Love Can Do" has a Lynch Mob vibe going for it while "Life's A Song" tries for a modern rock sound. The next two numbers ("Show Must Go On" and "Cocaine Freight Train") are both top notch rock tracks which gives the album a nice crunch factor. Just when I started really rocking out (man it kills me to type that about a Warrant album!) "Forever Found" kills the party. Another ballad it reminds me why the past should be buried and forgotten sometimes. "Candy Man" is an alright number. It had me thinking Van Halen for some reason. "Sunshine" is filler. "Tears In The City" is another ballad. Skip. Thankully "The Last Straw" ends things nicely. A mid paced rocker it left a good taste in my mouth. So my final verdict is that Rockaholic is pretty good. That said it could be better. It didn't need three ballads and it could have trimmed a few numbers off ("Life's A Song" and "Sunshine") but otherwise it is a surprisingly effective hard rock album. Color me impressed.