Trixter-New Audio Machine

Frontiers
2012

It's safe to say that almost every band from years ago will make a comeback of sorts if they can. Sometimes they'll do it whether anyone wants them to or not. Before you say something like "they don't make music like they used to" maybe you better try and remember all the bands that were around in your day. That brings us to Trixter, remember them? They made a slight impact towards the tail end of the hair metal ride in the early 90's. Their young faces were in Metal Edge and all the other fluffier hard rock magazines of the time. They frequently had articles written about how young they were, this was their angle. I thought they sounded like Warrant, but possibly even worse. They had a very cookie cutter, watered down hard rock sound that fans with no taste swallowed down like soda pop. I know that various members had been in other projects over the years. I knew they were gigging together as Trixter in more recent years. So I knew it was inevitable they would do an album. So here it is, Trixter giving us another album. I tried hard to be fair, I really focused in on every song. What we have is instead of second rate Warrant we get second rate Bon Jovi this time around. The vocals have some inflection and in some ways the music is slightly tighter, but twenty years later it certainly should be. However it should also be more creative and catchier, but it's not. I am sure someone who blindly loves all hair metal will proclaim "that Trixter have matured". Trust me they have not. They have better production and they take their time a little, but this is still formulaic, polished, lukewarm hard rock that you have already heard years ago and done by better bands. I stuck in there for songs like "Tattoos and Misery" and "Physical attaction" trying to hear where they had progressed and it didn't happen at least to an extent for me to enjoy this completely predictable pulp. I understand them taking another stab at it I really do. Although they try to change their approach a little it's just a matter of them not having the writing or playing skills to really make music that anyone should care about. There's better hard rock around than this, folks.

Liberty n' Justice-Light it up

Retroactive
2010

Bass player/songwriter returns with a variety of supporting musicians to help him with his Christian hard rock album including current/former members of Def Leppard, Warrant, Stryper, Dokken, Firehouse, LA Guns and others. However one listen has me thinking of the Love Boat. You get a hodge podge of people that all did something kind of known in the past, but here they are kind of thrown together with so-so writing and not much direction. That's how much of this plays out. I read the credits to see who was coming next, but even normally good performers like Phil Lewis and Robert Mason sound less than inspired. I can't blame too much because most of the material is about as drab as it gets with plenty of warmed over riffs too. Many of the tracks are bland and they manage to seem twice as long as they really are. Out of fourteen tracks there were only two real standouts. The surprise one was "Wrestling with God" with Pete Loran and Steve Brown of Trixter plus Bumblefoot from G-n-R. Nothing wrong with Bumblefoot, but Trixter were one of the absolute worst abominations to unleash their no-talent, hair-sprayed selves on the hard rock world. However here they are part of a fairly catchy song with some striking hooks. Not bad at all. Now before I even removed this disc from it's sleeve I knew the song I was most interested in was "Drunk Dead Gorgeous" Marq Torien of the Bulletboys and Chris Holmes formerly of WASP. My interest was due to the fact that I am a huge WASP fan. Not that Holmes was ever great, but he was good and he played on most of WASP's best albums. He doesn't disappoint here either as the rhythms sound similar to WASP around the time of say "Inside the electric circus". However it's Torien who really sells this song. It's not the best written song, but he gets in there with voice, elevates the energy level and pulls everything he can from it. Fine track and performances indeed. Not a good album at all, but it was worth a listen just for that one song.