ANGEL DOWN AVAILABLE FOR STREAMING: SOMEONE PLEASE SEND SEBASTIAN BACH TO SKID ROW

Okay okay okay, I had to get the lame Sebastian Bach pun out of the way.

ANYWAY, Sebastian Bach’s much ballyhooed new album, Angel Down, is now avail for streaming in its entirety on AOL music; I’ve listened to about half of it, and while I’m sure at least one of you will disagree with me, it’s really, really, really bad. Really bad.

Here’s the thing: it’s not impossible, in 2007, to make good hard rock or pop metal – hell, we’ve seen some pretty good examples of those genres this year – nor is the album bad because Bach is, as some have accused, “stuck in the 80s.” I mean, Bach is stuck in the 80s, but that’s not why this album is bad. This album is bad because the songwriting sucks. There are “hooks,” I suppose, but not good ones. It’s just boring, generic cock rock, and frankly, I don’t think anyone hanging out on the Strip in ’85 would’ve enjoyed this crap, either (then again, Pretty Boy Floyd managed to have a career, so who knows). And no amount of guest appearances by reclusive singers from more famous bands in the world can save lousy songwriting (By the way, it’s recently come to my attention that at least one of these songs was written by Ralph Santolla of Deicide and Obituary fame; I find that incredibly hard to believe, but in any case, whatever Santolla contributed didn’t do much to raise the quality level here).

So for now I’ll go back to daydreaming about Baz reuniting with Skid Row, thank you very much. Only thing is, after awhile, I’ll probably remember that the last two Skid Row albums sucked monkey balls, too, and I’ll have to be content with my one trillionth spin of Slave to the Grind.

-AR