Friday, August 15, 2014

Album Review: "Inner City Wolves" by Johnny Touch

Inner City Wolves
The world is a smaller place today. Is it because of the robot master race as discussed in The World's End or are we just advancing?

Thankfully, that connectivity is making it easier to find new music in an age when terrestrial radio has achieved a smug sameness across the country. In this modern world, it's easier and harder than ever to find new metal...

Today's album review is of a debut record. Johnny Touch, the band in question, is from Australia, and has released small bits of music here and there: demos, split 7"s, and not much else.

Outside of their home nation, they are virtually unknown, but that's all going to change soon.

Hopefully. For those metal fans who don't enjoy cookie monster vocals, ultra high gain music that all sounds the same, and desires music that hearkens back to the good old days of Judas Priest and Iron Maiden, keep reading.



Johnny Touch
Johnny Touch are classic early 80's metal, but released today. In an interesting turnabout, their music, which 10  years ago would be retro, is now very nowtro.

Bands like Dragonforce and Savage Messiah have helped carve out a niche that's now called Power Metal. (Seriously...why do I continue to be a slave to metal sub-genres?)

Most of the Power Metal I hear today always seems to have great music, but one very serious failing:

The vocals suck.

In order to pull off this genre of metal, you need to find a very special singer. You need a singer with balls the size of church bells and pipes to match and frankly, there just aren't many of these guys. Who'd have though there's a genre of music that's lacking for singers?

Johnny Touch is not lacking that bellowing voice. It's huge and big, kind of like Bruce Dickinson.

The music feels a lot like a cross between early Iron Maiden and Randy Rhoads Era Ozzy. The riffs have that Randy Gallop. Crazy Train is the best example here. The solos are highly influenced by Randy's style as well.

Unlike those Ozzy records, there's a big booming voice and more modern metal drumming. Double bass beats even come into play, though thankfully not constantly.

This is a very strong debut record and I expect great things from Johnny Touch.

Release: 8/19/14
Genre: Metal, Power Metal
Label: Shadow Kingdom Records
Facebook Link

Preview Link

No comments:

Post a Comment