Deal With The Devil＜Clear Gray Vinyl＞

A lot may have changed in the years since the last Lizzy Borden album, Master of Disguise, but the band, bless their souls, have stuck to their heavy-metal-meets-glam-in-a-dark-alley aesthetic. That's consistency for you. Not to mention an enviable ability to stay blind to musical trends. After disappearing for nearly a decade, thanks to legal wrangles, and then regrouping with a new lineup, Lizzy still sound like the missing link between Skid Row and Iron Maiden. The songs are simplistic, the guitars are over the top, and the lyrics are standard-issue metal schlock. Which are minor misdemeanors considering that the album packs in more hooks than a fisherman's kit. With its crunchy anthems, stomping choruses and overall fondness for pedal-to-the-metal excess Deal With the Devil is as infectious as chicken pox. On two tracks, Lizzy aim to stretch their wings -- "Zanzibar" wears its Eastern influences on its sleeve; "We Only Come Out at Night" adds a dash of industrial rock to the mix. There are a couple of covers that make up in vigour what they lack in originality: a torqued up, take-no-prisoners run through Blue Oyster Cult's "(This Ain't) The Summer of Love" and a version of Alice Cooper's "Generation Landslide" that manages to replicate much of the sneery edge of the original. And, yes, there's some great cover art by Todd MacFarlane as well. Loud, flashy, unpretentious, and with not a single ballad in sight, Deal With the Devil is good, cheap fun and proof that grunge never happened. ~ Leslie Mathew