• 1
• 2
• 3
• 4
• 5

Hehehe... I've died and gone to heaven. :) It's been a while since I heard an album with this sound, by that I mean not only an album with a recent release date, but also by a young band. Voodoo Smile is a French band that plays an excellent mix of heavy rock and heavy metal that will sure bring back memories to those who were into this stuff during the 80s. For those who think music has an expiry date (well, pop music does, but that's another story ;)), don't let this turn you off. The songs here do not sound like some let's-get-nostalgic stuff that some bands serve us. The compositions here are fresh-sounding, very entertaining and catchy, and overall very well-played, although I did notice some weird passages in a couple of places, but nothing serious enough to put a shade on this excellent debut. The point is that, while well rooted into the 80s heavy rock/metal, the band still comes out with a modern-enough sound so as to not be thrown into the "reunion" type of bands.

I just can't get tired of the vocals on this album. I don't know where they found that singer but I have to say he has one of the best voices in the genre. He displays a good vocal range throughout the album, from low to very high-pitched vocals and doing so almost flawlessly. He adopts a vocal style very close to Billy Idol's on the cover of "Rebel Yell". Impressive. The vocalist has left the band since the recording, and his replacement will definitely have big shoes to fill!

The overall sound of the album is quite "positive", in that this is not an "angry" metal album - so those who can't stand that or who think metal can't have clean vocals should stay away. I'd go as far as say that some of the songs are almost radio-friendly (if that kind of stuff played on radio, I'd turn it on from time to time... :)) There are a couple of ballads, but mostly the music is mid to fast-paced. You'll get everything from hard rock to melodic heavy metal (very catchy melodic lines!) with some very cool guitar solos on most songs. That's nearly 66 minutes of music that go by pretty fast and I could hardly resist the urge to press the Repeat button on the CD player. :)

Yet another new band that proves that reports of the death of heavy rock and "classic" heavy metal were greatly exaggerated. Buy this or die!