By 1993, hair metal was pretty much dead and buried, killed off by the likes of Pearl Jam, Soundgarden and Nirvana. But several bands were still out there trying to survive. One of these such groups was the Bulletboys. Best known for hits like \u201cSmooth Up In Ya\u201d and the obnoxious and sophomoric \u201cHard As A Rock,\u201d the band was struggling after their sophomore album tanked. Returning to the studio with producer Ted Templeman, the band attempted to try some new things, probably figuring it would be their last chance to make a major label record.<\/p>\n
The first single \u201cWhen Pigs Fly\u201d is a hell of a departure for the band. Gone were the sexual overtones and Marq Torien\u2019s uniquely high falsetto. Here was a hair metal band sounding a little grungy and managing to pull it off. The song is insanely catchy and one of the band\u2019s most well-written numbers.<\/p>\n
Two throwaways, \u201cSlow And Easy\u201d and \u201cThe Rising,\u201d are here to lengthen the disc and nothing else. \u201cSing A Song\u201d is a ballad but with a twist; the instrumentation is different than most other bands and more adventurous, but it doesn\u2019t help the song rise out of mediocrity.<\/p>\n
\u201c1-800-Goodbye\u201d sounds like Bulletboys of old but the song sounds incredibly dated, even by 1993 standards. The damn thing just doesn\u2019t work and feels out of place. \u201cThe Show\u201d has more of that grungy sound that all the kids just loved in 1993, but the refrain of \u201cBaby, you\u2019re an icon, baby, you\u2019re a hard-on\u201d sounds so clich\u00e9d and forced. This was once a band that was heavily compared to Roth-era Van Halen, but by this record, those days were looooooong gone.<\/p>\n
\u201cLaughing With The Dead\u201d is not a terrible song. It\u2019s got a very catchy chorus and is one of the better-written songs on the record. The intro to \u201cFess\u201d is a very interesting sample lifted from the late, great pianist James Booker. Unfortunately, that\u2019s the best thing about this unmemorable song.<\/p>\n
As expected, this album tanked, failed to chart and the band was dropped the next year. They also lost their manager and their producer as well as their guitarist and drummer. The next twenty years were not very kind to the Bulletboys, but they\u2019re still around and this was a fitting epitaph to their major label years and to hair metal in general.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":91,"featured_media":32271,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[9576],"rating":[5619],"class_list":["post-44024","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-bulletboys","rating-rating-c"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/44024","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/91"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44024"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/44024\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32271"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44024"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44024"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=44024"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=44024"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}