Review: Tim "Ripper" Owens, "Play My Game"

I’ve held off on this review for a while, hoping the record would grow on me a little more, but I think it’s time to let it go.

You won’t find a much bigger fan of Tim Owens than me (you may remember my rants when he was booted from Iced Earth last year), but as a songwriter, I continue to be somewhat disappointed by his efforts. Here he’s recruited guys like Bob Kulick, Chris Caffery and John Comprix as co-writers, and a pretty impressive stable of musicians, including Jeff Loomis, Rudy Sarzo, Simon Wright, Steve Stevens, Bruce Kulick, Caffery, Michael Wilton, Doug Aldrich, Dave Ellefson, Marco Mendoza, James Lomenzo and others as backup.

Not surprisingly with that lineup, the music is rock solid. The problem, surprisingly, comes in the area where Owens should be most adept — the vocal melodies. For a guy with such a great voice, the melodies here are often vanilla and occasionally even awkward. A beautiful example of what I’m talking about is on second track, “Believe,” which features this gigantic guitar riff from Comprix and a vocal melody from Owens that’s like listening to paint dry.

There are some shining moments on the record. “It Is Me” is hands down the best tune on the record with a grinding, heavy riff from Comprix and some of Owens’ best vocals here. Even it has problems, though, as do several other songs, with some awkward lyrics. The Priest-influenced tune “The Cover Up” is another winner (despite the Area 51 cliches) and benefits from a ripping Loomis lead. Surprisingly one of the better moments is the ballad “To Live Again,” which features a huge chorus that shows some nice vocal control from Owens. The title track opens with a nice bouncing riff and one of the most aggressive vocal deliveries on the record, and it features a nice shift to a plodding chorus. It reminds me (and I’m sure Owens would had this comparison) of some of Rob Halford’s work with Fight. Finally, the fanboy in me has to favor the final track, “The Shadows Are Alive,” co-written and performed with Savatage guitarist Chris Caffery. It’s one of the most varied pieces on the album, opening in a ballad mode, then moving to a traditional metal piece and finally a power metal-influenced ending. It also really allows Owens to show his full range. It’s a strong ending to the record and makes the songs that came prior to it even more disappointing in a way.

There are also a few numbers here left in limbo despite some strong moments. Album opener “Starting Over” has some nice depth and tasteful guitar work from Bob Kulick, and the verse is nice, but the chorus just doesn’t seem to fit. Similarly, “No Good Goodbyes” has an interesting Alice in Chains influence and some good guitar work from Bruce Kulick, but it falls apart with the chorus which again just doesn’t impress.

In the end, you’ve got five really good songs, two or three middle-of-the-road numbers and an awful lot of uninspired and unmemorable filler on a 12-track album. Owens’ voice is great as usual, and I can’t fault the musicianship with the all-star cast. It’s just that many of the songs just don’t ever come together.

"Play My Game" is a better than average record, but probably not that defining moment that Owens’ fans were hoping for from the first record where he’s calling all the shots. The truth of the matter is, "Play My Game" isn’t bad, but if Owens wants to be seen as more than a hired gun, he’s really going to have to up his game in the songwriting department.

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(Review originally published at Teeth of the Divine.)

Review: Chris Caffery, "W.A.R.P.E.D."

I’m not a big fan of mixing politics and music. For one thing, I’ve got a lot of strong opinions, and I’ve had otherwise good songs ruined for me because I couldn’t bring myself to belt out lyrics that I disagreed with. For another, I think when artists start to promote an agenda with their music, the message becomes the driving force and the music suffers. I know it’s a long-standing tradition, and I suppose if you’re doing acoustic folk rock where the lyrics are the primary focus it’s OK. In metal, though, I just believe the music should come first.

That’s why I was a little nervous when I picked up this latest effort from Chris Caffery, an expansion of the God Damn War EP that came along with last year’s Faces. Being the Savatage fanboy that I am, I didn’t want to dislike a Caffery album. I was pleasantly surprised. While there are a few moments of political posturing, for the most part he stays away from the politics and focuses on war itself. The overriding theme here is “war = bad,” which I think everyone, no matter what their political opinions or affiliations can agree with.

The album opens with the mid-paced clunker “Home is Where the Hell Is,” but picks up quickly with the second track, the previously released “God Damn War.” Listening to the song now, I think the same thing I did when I first heard it – this would be one hell of a song with Jon Oliva on vocals. It’s still a pretty good song with Caffery doing his best Oliva impression. It’s got one of the strongest guitar riffs on the album and really has the feel of a Gutter Ballet-era ’Tage tune – say, fittingly, “Of Rage and War.”

The first surprise of the album comes on “Election Day,” an old school Megadeth thrasher, complete with Caffery doing a pretty passable Dave Mustaine impression. He returns to the Megadeth sound on “Saddamize,” which has some really nice middle-eastern guitar-work and reminds me of some of the stuff on Rust in Peace, despite a white noise intro that goes on far too long. Another mid-tempo number, “Erase” has a memorable chorus melody, but once again I find myself missing Oliva’s vocals, which would have put the song over the top. It’s got a real Doctor Butcher vibe to it. The same can be said of the frantic “Edge of Darkness.”

Quite a few of the songs on this album suffer from simply not being very memorable. Caffery turns in nice riffs on most of the songs, but nothing about the rest of the song stands out. Great examples of this are the forgettable “Fool! Fool!,” “State of the Head” and “I.” I won’t even mention the version of “Amazing Grace,” punctuated with bomb explosions and gunfire, which, while I understand the reasoning, seems incredibly out of place here.

I finally get the blast of Oliva that I’ve been longing for on “Iraq Attack,” a song originally written for Doctor Butcher during the first Gulf War. It’s appropriate that they pull it out in a similar situation. It’s a darker piece, complete with Sirens-style shrieks, that would have been right at home on the Doctor Butcher album. The lyrics, at times, seem a little forced, but it’s still one of the strongest songs here. Caffery follows that up with the addictively catchy title track, which has a bouncy hook that won’t get out of your head. “Beat Me, You’ll Never Beat Me” has a satisfyingly heavy verse and chorus, with an acoustic bridge that finds Caffery doing his best Geddy Lee impression.

Ultimately, I don’t think W.A.R.P.E.D. is nearly as strong as Faces. But out of the 15 songs on the album, 10 of them are pretty solid. That’s not a bad average. Then again, I could also be jaded a bit by my frustration at not having had a new Savatage record in four years while Caffery and Oliva keep pumping out solo projects. Here’s hoping that once they get the new TSO album finished, they’ll finally get around to getting back in the studio with Savatage.

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Review: Doctor Butcher, "Doctor Butcher"

When the Doctor Butcher album originally came out 10 years ago, I ordered the import because I just couldn’t wait for a U.S. release. At the time, Jon Oliva had been all but absent from Savatage since the Edge of Thorns album, and even though I liked Zachary Stevens, I was really missing that old school Savatage sound. With Oliva and Chris Caffery, I knew it had to be good.

For the 10th anniversary, Black Lotus gives us not the follow-up album that Oliva and Caffery promised shortly after the original release, but a repackaged version of the original album with a few new songs thrown in for good measure. The good news is that they promise once again in the liner notes to do a follow-up. (But not before we get a new Savatage record I hope.)

When the album originally hit 10 years ago, I absolutely loved it. I was starved for that old school Savatage sound, something along the lines of Sirens, Hall of the Mountain King or Gutter Ballet. That wasn’t exactly what I got, but the album played enough on the darker side of the band to please me. Having not listened to the album in quite a few years, I wondered how it would hold up. As I said, then I was starved for that sound. Since then, I’ve gotten Savatage’s Poets & Madmen, with Oliva back at the helm. I’ve heard solid solo efforts from Caffery that evoke the Savatage sound, and of course Oliva delivered the excellent ’Tage Mahal under the Jon Oliva’s Pain moniker earlier this year. I’m not missing it quite so much these days.

I shouldn’t have been concerned. As soon as Oliva’s voice cut across the music in “The Altar,” I remembered how much I liked the album. It’s a bit grittier and less refined than the average Savatage album. With Savatage, you often feel like you’re listening to the metal version of symphony, but Doctor Butcher has a more balls-out rock ‘n’ roll feel, particularly on numbers like “Don’t Talk to Me” and “Reach Out and Torment Someone,” which still voices frustrations that most of us can relate to even in the days of the Do Not Call list. I still catch a little groove on the chorus of “Season of the Witch,” and I still love the childhood taunt chorus of “I Hate, You Hate, We All Hate.” So, yeah, 10 years later, I still really like this album. There are a lot of records I can’t say that about.

Though the information that came with the album claims that it was remastered, I can’t really tell a lot of difference. Perhaps the bottom end is beefed up a bit, but to my ears it’s still pretty much the same album from 1995. The thing that people who already have the album will be most interested in is the bonus disc with four tracks from the original Doctor Butcher demos, as well as a newly recorded song “Inspecter Highway” (and no I didn’t misspell “Inspecter,” it’s about a haunted highway.) Though it’s freshly recorded (and has better production values than many of the other songs) “Inspecter Highway” was written in 1993, so it still has the same feel as the rest of the album, with perhaps just a few tweaks. If not for those production values, I’d have trouble believing this was recorded recently because Oliva’s voice sounds better on this track than it has in a long time. It sounds like a Mountain King or Gutter Ballet era vocal line, complete with some Sirens shrieks.

The remaining tracks on the bonus disc have been available in varying quality via bootleg and the Internet for a while, but this is a chance to get them in CD quality format. Based on previous copies I’ve had, these do seem to have been remastered a bit. For the most part, they are weaker songs than those that made the album. “Born of the Board” is the most Savatage-like of any of the 16 Doctor Butcher songs, starting with a piano ballad and building to a crashing crescendo. But probably the best of the bunch is the full-blast rocker “Help! Police?” Lyrically, it’s not on par with Oliva’s usual work, but that adds to the feel of Savatage’s earliest work. Think Power of the Night.

If you missed this one the first time around, you should definitely check it out now.

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Review: Circle II Circle, "Watching in Silence"

Nearly four years after his last performance with Savatage, singer Zak Stevens returns with a vengeance.

On "Watching in Silence," Stevens debuts his new band and gets by with a little help from his old friends. Savatage founder, vocalist and keyboard player Jon Oliva helped produce the album and also co-wrote many of the songs with Stevens. Savatage guitarist Chris Caffery also contributed to the writing process.

The result is something that sounds a whole lot like the symphonic metal masters, but at the same time Stevens tweaks the sound enough to make it his own. While songs like "Into the Wind" and "The Circle" obviously evoke his former band, the music is perhaps a bit less complex than his later work with Savatage. It's also very strongly influenced by Queen.

The album has a nice mix of heavy, symphonic blasts and soft piano-laced interludes, and Stevens, who has one of the finest voices in the business, is in top shape here. On "F.O.S.," he even provides the layered vocal breakdowns that became a highlight of Stevens-era Savatage.

Though it's uncredited, and I'm not 100 percent certain, I believe the menacing whispers on "Forgiven" may be Oliva. If so, it's a bit of a letdown for me. I've been waiting a long time to hear those two magnificent voices swapping vocals the way they do on the live versions of some songs - maybe one day I'll get it.

In the meantime, I've got a great album from Zak Stevens, with a new Savatage album in the works for later this year. What more could I ask for?

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