Steelhouse Lane - Slaves Of The New World

1. Give It All To Me
2. Find What We're Lookin' For
3. Son Of A Loaded Gun
4. Turn Around
5. Slaves Of The New World
6. All I Believe In
7. In Too Deep
8. The Nightmare Begins
9. All Or Nothin'
10. Seven Seas
11. Where Are You Now

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Total Playing Time: m:s

Review date: 30 June 1999

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This is Steelhouse Lane's second album, to follow their "Metallic Blue" debut. In case you don't already know, the main man in Steelhouse Lane in Mike Slamer formerly of Streets and City Boy.

On the first couple of listens you're gonna saying "What's all the hype about?". I know I certainly was. Preserve for a few more listens and the album becomes much more appealing. You'll notice that vocalist, Keith Slack, is really rather good, coming across as a mixture of Jeff Scott Soto, David Coverdale and Russell Arcara. Delve deeper and the musicianship starts to gain your admiration. Put these together with a set of mostly competent songs and you'll realise that this a noteworthy release. Musically I'm reminded to bands like Giant, Hardline etc.

"Give It All To Me" is a bluesy hard rock opening that sets a high standard for the rest of the album to follow. The difficult task falls to the lighter more uptempo "Find What We're Lookin' For" (which actually started out life as a tune written for Boston). "Son Of A Loaded Gun" was co-written with Billy Trudel of Public Domain. It's an urban cowboy tune as performed by Bon Jovi (e.g. Dry Country). Power AOR with big a chorus and some nifty guitar work are components of the semi-ballad called "Turn Around".

So far everything has been going brilliantly, then the title track rears it's ugly head. In places I'm reminded of the 'Ghostbusters' theme tune. The music sounds a bit 'too fast' for it's own good and the shout/rap vocals don't cut it either. On some listens it is OK, on others just plain annoying. This is followed a big ballad called "All I Believe In" which has some great vocal harmonies on display.

The band crank up the guitars again for "In Too Deep". OK, so the next tune drove me crazy for a while. I just couldn't place where I'd heard it before. It turns out that "Every Nightmare Ends" is a Streets tunes that have on tape somewhere. It is a great tune. The reason that Mike chose this song was that he felt the original version was a little too fast and not heavy enough. "All Or Nothin'" is an uptempo rocker with a big chorus. "Seven Seas" is killer slice of damned catchy Melodic Rock that steals the "best the song on the album" award. Steelhouse Lane terminate proceeding in rockin' mode with "Where Are You Now".

This is an album that I've progressively become more enthusiastic about. It seems to get better with each listen. The title track is black mark and prevents it from being from being a truly killer album.