Live Fast, Die Fast

Fear not, dear metal maniacs, "Live Fast, Die Fast" is not as superficial as its stupid title might suggest. Wolfsbane deliver in fact a quite entertaining and solid record somewhere between AOR, hard rock and heavy metal. The fast and short songs get quite boring after a while but especially the more experimental tracks are easily worth checking this record out.

The longest track "Tears From A Fool" starts an acoustic rock ballad and turns into an energizing commercial hard rock track with some strong eighty vibes. Blaze Bayley, later vocalist of Iron Maiden and also in his two solo projects amongst others, delivers a quite diversified job on this track that reminds me in fact a little bit of Iron Maiden's No Prayer For The Dying and Bruce Dickinson's first solo outputs Tattooed Millionaire and Balls To Picasso. Influences from Alice Cooper or Whitesnake can also be detected as this record hails the most famous rock icons of the eighties. The straight party smasher and perfect album closer "Pretty Baby", the more pumping and metal orientated "Killing Machine" and the more commercial "I Like It Hot" that would have made a great single are other notable highlights of this easily listening record that almost constantly puts a smile on our faces with its sympathetic energy, rebellious attitude and wild romantic lyrics. The production is mellow, the cover artwork is mellow and the song material not more than good but it's the authenticity of the band that saves this debut record for me from its small flaws. It's a fun album and there must be albums like this as one simply can't always feel for intellectual, original and ambitious music. This is a pure piece of rock and roll rebellion.

We surely have no original highlight here and some filler material such as "Shakin'" can be found on the record, but overall I would warmly suggest this album to any fan of good hard rock music and the already quite charismatic voice of Blaze Bayley. This album is the ideal way to get a great nostalgic hard rock party started.

This is the first full album of Wolfsbane and it has the freshness and enthusiasm of a starting band with the world at their feet. The tracks are high paced and very entertaining.

Wolfsbane is a band with a sense of humor, as shown by the lyrics and titles, but that doesn’t mean the music is put together hastily. Jason Edwards might be the only guitarist in the band, he uses the space allotted to him very well: the guy plays great riffs and great solos. Those solos are not superfast or super-technical, but they are recognizable. This is a perfect example of style being more important than technique.

The music can be described as metal with a slight rock n’ roll edge, especially in the slower songs where the use of palm muting is scarce. The subject of the songs is what you would expect from AOR and hard rock bands (party, chicks, booze etc).

The man that put Wolfsbane on the metal map is of course Blaze Bayley. This is definitely the band which fitted his voice best. I have the impression that his vocal range was a bit higher at the time, and his screams screech through the music like a knife through butter.

This is a very entertaining album, As long as you don’t expect traditional heavy metal.

Best songs: Manhunt and Killing Machine.

Wolfsbane, which has become known as Blaze Bayley's previous band before his short two albums with Iron Maiden, is probably the most sex-driven band I've ever heard. Virtually 80% of this album has glam type lyrics focused on getting laid. This particular album doesn't really sound typical of things that Blaze would do, many of these songs seem rather punk influenced with their the song structure and the attitude that the vocals possess.

The opening track, Manhunt will storm your sense with its intro. A very Steve Vai-ish tapping guitar riff and rapid drumming makes this a definite headbanger. There isn't really much to the lyrics though besides "Manhunt, Manhunt, Manhunt!" though, but still probably one of the best tracks on the album.

Fell Out of Heaven is pure crap. This definately should have done well, because its pure sex-driven cock rock. Its basically just a simple 3 chord song. Little can be enjoyed from the music, and hearing "legs do the talking, they talk about love" is enough to make one sick.

I Like It Hot is probably the second best song on this album. Its not really all that heavy and still has alot of sex references, but it sounds like something that David Lee Roth would do with his solo band. The solo here even sounds like a Steve Vai solo with the high pitched rapid fingering.

This album personally doesn't sound very metal to me, except for Manhunt and Killing Machine, but some of the songs are relatively funny and at the very least listenable. I personally found it hilarious that the band put copies of their rejection letter that record labels send them inside of the liner notes to the album. I don't really see Iron Maiden fans liking this, but if you are a David Lee Roth fan, then you'll probably be able to get into this.