Lucifer : "Lucifer I"

This is a little slicker than I imagined , but before I pressed play my call on this was a cross between Ghost and any of the female fronted vest rock bands that came out a few years ago. I was not too far off base. It's more 80s than 70s. The groove at three minute mark of the first song was not expected so I am going to keep an open mind.The second song slows into a more typical hard rock. The chorus reminds me of Pat Benatar or Heart. The second song get a little boring. The guitar solo sounds less than inspired. The retro thing seemed more honest on the first Ghost album. They dial things up into this decade on "Eclipse". The lyrics are way less Satanic than I thought they would be going into this.

 Of course of you are going to have a song called "Sabbath" it has to be doomy. This is a much better direction for this band to head in. They hover around similar , but with a little more of a torch song feel from the vocals on "Izrael". The more up temp[o section of this song reminds me of Queens of the Stoneage. Not a specific song , just feels like something they would do back when they used to rock out more. The Thin Lizzy boogie section this song goes into is the best part."White Mountain" makes me pretty indifferent to it. There is not anything I dislike about it but nothing that sell me on it either. "Mourning Star" finds it self in another boring middle ground. It sounds good but there is nothing else to it. They close out with the heaviest chug on the album. But this is not much more than a throw away riff you can find on a hundred other albums at least.

I'll round this one down to a 6.5. There were a few surprises, but nothing to make up for some thing that was way too middle of the road to be called Lucifer, but that really isn't the most creative name in the book and makes this band sound like they are trying to hard which in some ways they are. Many of these bands get by on the lead singers looks, and femi-nazis dispute this all you like, but if this was a guy could this band have gotten away with playing this kind of music. They are not as bad with this as Pretty Reckless, but it gets them by. They are on the High On Fire tour so I guess we shall see them.