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About six years ago, Saliva rode the nü-metal wave to
success with the hit singles “Your Disease” and
“Click Click Boom” from their second album, Every
Six Seconds. On Back into Your System, the follow-up
released the next year, the Memphis quintet refined their
sound, diversifying by mixing in a Southern rock influence.
By the time they got to 2004’s Survival of the Sickest,
the rapping had disappeared completely, and the change led
the band to its strongest album, a loving, attitude-filled
ode to Mötley Crüe-style party rock. Unfortunately,
it came and went with little fanfare, failing to reach the
heights of the previous two releases, both of which were certified
Gold (500,000 copies sold).
The band took longer than usual to regroup. Frontman Josey
Scott ventured into acting, while guitarist Chris D’Abaldo
announced he had left the band, retracted that statement,
then left again. Perhaps seeking to rekindle their former
glory, the four remaining members turned once again to Bob
Marlette, the producer of their two hit albums. As producer,
mixer, engineer and co-writer of all 10 songs, his fingerprints
are all over their latest effort, Blood Stained Love Story.
The result is a wildly unfocused album that features Saliva
at its best and, more often, worst. The disc begins in dramatic
fashion with the first single, “Ladies and Gentlemen.”
Its spoken verses and rollicking chorus show more invention
than the other nine tracks combined. It feels like the introduction
to a great piece of work as Scott boasts of something “like
nothing you’ve ever seen before.” To say that
this promise goes unfulfilled is an understatement. Scott
returns to rapping on “King of the Stereo” and
“One More Chance,” while the band plays without
a hint of intensity. The guitar solos that were so essential
to Survival of the Sickest are mostly absent; those
that made the cut are merely cosmetic. Many of the songs are
bulked up by unnecessary electronic loops.
The band has taken a colossal step back, delivering an album
of nondescript radio-friendly tunes. Scott has gone from singing
about a “rock n’ roll revolution” and spitting
wicked barbs at Nickelback and Default to asking, “Why
can’t I be normal like everyone else?” on “Going
Under,” one of Blood Stained Love Story’s
many ballads and a song that bears a disturbing resemblance
to something you might hear from REM . The poppy, upbeat “Twister”
is an embarrassment. But then it’s followed by “Black
Sheep,” the heaviest song the band has ever recorded
and a reminder that they are the same guys you heard about
a half-hour earlier on “Ladies and Gentlemen.”
It’s hard, though, to believe Scott as he proclaims
himself “an outlaw straight from birth” and “the
black sheep of the family” when you’ve just heard
the sickeningly sunny “Twister.”
If you purchase the album from Best Buy, you get a second
disc with two bonus tracks. Die-hard Saliva fans—I suspect
there may be fewer of them after they hear this new batch
of tunes—will want this version. Anyone else would be
better off downloading “Ladies and Gentlemen”
and “Black Sheep,” then blasting Survival
of the Sickest to remind them of who Saliva used to be.
®2007 Live-Metal.net
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