Vinnie Vincent Invasion ~ All Systems Go (album review) ... Guitar solos that would make Steve Vai blush!

Style: hard rock, heavy metal
Label: Capitol
Year: 1988
Home: n/a

Members: Mark Slaughter ~ vocals
Vinnie Vincent ~ guitar/b. vocals
Dana Strum ~ bass/b. vocals
Bobby Rock ~ drums

Additional: Jeff Scott Soto ~ b. vocals

Before Mark Slaughter fronted Slaughter, he fronted the Vinnie Vincent Invasion. I didn't know that before hearing this album & researching it. The guy has a super set of pipes & shows a bit of range on the album with 3 distinct voices. That really impressed me. Yet, for every moment I was impressed by him I was also turned off. At times his vocal phrase phrasing & use of echo, or chorus, makes him far too much of a Robert Plant imitator for my tastes. Other times his vocals were distracting or just plain annoying. I wanted him to reign it in more often than not, while other times I loved hearing the variety & wanted more of it. On the other hand, I might be laying blame at Slaughter's feet when the problem is really iffy songs that he was just trying not to be embarrassed by. Let me be clear. The songs are iffy. That doesn't mean they're bad. They're iffy for one huge reason: they are badly imitative. On multiple occasions I thought I was hearing a Jimmy Page riff. I do not listen to a solo album by the former guitarist of Kiss to hear Led Zeppelin. Need I say more? I'm 100% sure the riff on the opener "Ashes To Ashes" is pretty close to a famed Zep riff. Slaughter's singing "Baby, baby, yeah" with vocal effects just drives it into the Led Zeppelin imitation territory far too much for my tastes. "Heavy Pettin'" also sounds like a riff I've heard by Zep, & I almost found myself singing the other more famous song. This is not a good sign. The ethereal acoustic guitar part of "Ashes To Ashes" might be Zep, but I do have to give Vinnie kudos for nailing it perfectly. But, still, he's nailing a sound another band is known for. Though, its not all Zep Mach II. "Dirty Rhythm" reminded me of AC/DC, & the opening guitar part of "Love Kills" has an all too heavy '70's prog flavor. Essentially, who is Vinnie Vincent? A Jimmy Page imitator? I think not. I really like Vinnie's work with Kiss. I felt he was a good choice for their changing sound. Even when the songs were iffy, Vinnie shined through with great wild riffs. Thus, the few parts of All Systems Go that I enjoyed were the moments when Vinnie stopped being someone else & was himself. "Let Freedom Rock" & "Burn" had backing vocals that dominated in a bad way, but Vinnie makes up for it with some quirky almost violent guitar playing that would make Steve Vai blush. I love Vai, so that's a huge compliment. This is what I want to hear. "Ashes To Ashes", when not being imitative, has a guitar solo that is insane. It goes through about 8 distinct styles &/or sounds &/or techniques, including sounding like a violin, that might be found on a Spinal Tap album. I just wish it hadn't taken 3 minutes to get to that point playing riffs by another band. I would recommend this album to guitar fans & anyone who likes Mark Slaughter. It has weak parts, but the sheer force of the players is worth hearing. For anyone else, you might or might not like it. For me, I've heard enough wannabe Zep bands, not to mention writing the biography of a Zep tribute band singer, so I've had my Zep quota. One last note. I never ever need to hear ever again another musician doing an instrumental version of the "Star Spangled Banner". I don't care if you're Hendrix or Chris Squire. Its cool when singers do it, usually, as its a vocal challenge or a vocal embarrassment, but on a guitar or bass its not exactly anything that can't be done. Holding a note on a guitar is not impressive. Jumping an octave or whatever to the next note is also not impressive. Please stop, please.

Slaughter ~ 10 Greatest Songs (hits comp) ... A mass slaughter of good songs!

Style: hard rock
Label: Capitol
Year: 2011
Home: Las Vegas, Nevada

Members: Mark Slaughter ~ vocals/guitar/keyboards
Tim Kelly ~ guitar/b. vocals
Dana Strum ~ bass/b. vocals
Blas Elias ~ drums/b. vocals

For those that do want to dip into the top 80's hair metal bands you're going to eventually come across Slaughter. They sold plenty out the door & made a few bubbles in the pool before the grunge & alt rock explosion landed on them. Though, their hits haven't necessarily ridden out the era well, as outside frontman Mark Slaughter's nasal shout there's really very little distinctive about them. Of course, fans of the band will criticize me for saying that they're not the greatest most special thing, but they really do sound like cliched 80's hair metal, particularly decades later. Tons of their peers did it better, & many who didn't have survived via reunions where they've actually finally churned out something interesting. The band still performs, but hasn't made an album since 1999, the year guitarist Tim Kelly died, so if they have put some personality into the music most of us aren't privy to it. Slaughter turns in some good old fashioned hair metal, end of story. If you want to check them out go not for their individual albums but this greatest hits package. It's a budget release, no question about it, but its a rarity for a budget release as it actually does present the best of the band. Mass Slaughter: The Best Of Slaughter has the complete career overview, but for an introduction this is all you're ever going to need. It is missing some certified chart-toppers, replaced by non-chart-toppers (i.e. "Shake This Place", "She Wants More", "Loaded Gun", "Eye To Eye"), which is strange considering all five of their albums between 1990 to 2000 actually spawned decent ranking chart hits ... not even David Lee Roth has that success rate. While there's nothing from their final release Back To Reality with Jeff Blando on guitar. But, there's also a second & more important reason to get this compilation over a studio album. Slaughter had two major hits their career became built on, "Up All Night", "Fly To The Angels", but the best song by a longshot is "Days Gone By" from the later days that one is liable to miss getting a studio album or two. Missing this song is missing out on Slaughter at their creative best, as its a nearly operatic power ballad & it makes everything else sound like the band was following record label commandments instead of trying to do something that has memorability. But, the question is are you going to listen to Slaughter a lot or want to pursue them further into the studio albums? At the time this music was all the rage, but now they just sound so dated and of the time that its hard to imagine that they sold as much as they did. Their music is as play by the numbers as perfect as you can get ... I mean, the next step is to actually just play Bon Jovi covers.