Sin and Bones

Having come a long way from their roots as a none-too-serious cover band, the unlikely grouping of Wrestler Chris Jericho and the brains behind Rap metal apex Stuck Mojo has released its third legit album of original content after their first two Spinal Tap-ish cover albums. Personally I enjoyed their first foray into legitimacy All That Remains and REALLY enjoyed their sophmore effort Chasing the Grail, so I had high expectations going into this new CD, and boy have Y2J and company delivered.

Building upon their increasingly distinctive style of downtuned sound combined with classic heavy metal songwriting and style, Fozzy continues to write songs that are dark and vicious yet strikingly catchy, with just a smattering of Rich Ward's funk-influenced rhythm. It almost seems like the band's shooting for a concept album feeling, each song dealing with some form of sin, tortured souls or dark temptations, from some physical or metal stressor scratching someone's mind away in Sandpaper, the all too common love-as-drug metaphor in She's My Addiction, or the obvious allusions to the fictional murdering sociopath Dexter Morgan in Dark Passenger. While the concept of darkness and death is probably the most tried and true well of ideas for metal bands, it's refreshing to hear such lyrics both in the hands of an actual singer and from the lyrical standpoint of introspection and emotional conflict, as opposed to the repetitive, snooze-inducing gore porn of Cannibal Corpse and their ilk.

All of the songs, even if the lyrics are vauge or formulaic, are carried with grace and ease by Jericho's badass metal tenor. Singing like the love child of James Hetfield and Rob Halford, the grit on his voice doesn't impede or sound off-kilter when he's belting out the high notes, and his cleaner sounding low parts cut right through the production. Sure he's no Freddy Mercury, but he gets the job done and then some. Y2J also gets extra kudos for his striking Ozzy impression on their bonus track cover of Sabbath's Fairies Wear Boots. On the side of the instruments, Ward and his Stuck Mojo crew hold down the fort like the pros they are, delivering the heavy chugging riffs expected of them but slowing things down when needed. It's far from the classically complex levels of Dream Theater or Symphony X, but it's big, bold, and catchy.

The album also ends on what could be one of the greatest long-form metal epics ever, the 11-minute Storm the Beaches. Fozzy are not unfamiliar with ending on a grand finale as evidenced by their previous album's 14-minute apocalypse story Wormwood, but this albums ending hits your heart and mind in a way the Book of revelations can't, delivering a historical fiction perspective of a young infantryman at Omaha beach on D-Day. Just knowing that the song's frightened, gripping, painful account of seas running red and soldiers falling by the hundreds describes an actual event gives it serious emotional weight, aided by heavy yet not-overbearing production to bring this album to a gut-wrenching, somber close.

I'm willing to bet that to a lot of people, the idea of a pro wrestler fronting a metal band still sounds like a gimmick. Well, it once was to some extent, but after this recent triumph of modern metal power, the man who formerly took the stage name of Mongoose McQueen proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that his vocal chops are for real, and that Rich Ward deserves his self-proclaimed title The Duke of Metal. I'll be headbanging to this one for a long time.