Originally Posted by
binnie
The debut record from ex-Ozzy Osbourne guitar hero Jake E Lee's new band, featuring Eric Singer on drums (ex-Kiss and future Alice Cooper band) and the impossibly talented Ray Gillan on vocals (ex-touring vocalist for Black Sabbath.) In many respects, this record was the antithesis of the increasigly bloated hair metal that was been coughed out of an ever tired Sunset Strip - raw, under-produced, and bluesy, it was a beautiful counterbalance to the reverb-heavy, production lavished monstrosities that L.A was churning out in its final days before the rise of Grunge. The influences were obviously and unappologetically European - Led Zeppelin, Humble Pie, Jeff Beck Group, Cream and Deep Purple - and the delivery verges on primal. Album opener 'High Wire' featured a riff of gargantually-serpentine proportions that equals anything Jimmy Page ever penned, Lee's blues-hysterionics battling with Gillan's soaring vocals for the listener's attention. The blues dominates the record, with the frosty-kiss of 'Winter's Call' Zeppelinization of the power ballad, and 12 Bar explosion of 'Rumblin Train', which was Lee's showcase. Gillan returned the favour on the haunting epic of closer 'Seasons' his voice spinning from low, tender croon to testosterone wail, marking the song out as a stamp of sincere anguish in a sea of sacarine sentimentality populated by the rest of L.A at the tail end of the '80s.
Indeed single 'Dreams In The Dark' is the only glaring sign of the times here, whilst 'Dancing On The Edge' and 'Hard Driver' keep up the full-tilt rawk angle that the likes of Raging Slab would up and run with in subsequent years, with 'Devil's Stomp' was the kind of hulk of a song beyond the hairspray and lip gloss of the likes of Pretty Boy Floyd and Slaughter.
This was the high point for Badlands, who never reached their potential. Their second record - 'Voodoo Highway' - was a mixed bag cluttered with forays into James Taylor-esque MOR, and the death of Gillan due to A.I.D.S a year later meant that Lee, surely one of the most talented guitar players of the decade, was now a gunslinger without a cause. A sad end, but what a beginning!