Desperado – Bloodied, but Unbowed
Release Date: 1996
Desperado was a band formed by former Twisted Sister frontman Dee Snider. For this band, Dee recruited former Iron Maiden drummer Clive Burr, guitar great (and Randy Rhoads predecessor) Bernie Torme, and bassist Marc Russell to create something that was so unlike anything he had ever done with Twisted Sister. Desperado boasted a very rootsy, bluesy, and much more organic sound than what I would have ever imagined. How in the living fuck could a band featuring Dee Snider, Bernie Torme, and Clive Burr not be fucking huge? Ya know? I will really never understand for the life of me how this band didn’t take off.
After forming in 1988, word of Desperado seemed to be everywhere and offered some promise of being something really exciting. I mean, just the fact that Dee Snider and Clive Burr were in a band together was awesome but to hear that Bernie Torme was in it as well had me dying to hear what it would sound like. The band had a full album to be titled “Bloodied, but Unbowed” all set to be released in May of 1990 and all of the sudden… nothing. Being that this was pre-internet, one couldn’t just Google to find out what the fuck was going on so instead, we just had to be with it. Years later I would learn that what had happened was that the record label pulled the plug at the very last minute, shelved the album, and then dropped the band while keeping the rights to the songs and the name. Desperado disbanded and that was the end.
After really listening to this album I just cannot understand why Elektra would scrap this record. “Bloodied, but Unbowed” is a really cohesive and stellar album that deserves to be remembered as one of hard rock/metal’s greatest lost treasures. Desperado sounds so tight and so connected with each other. There’s a lot of feel and emotion behind the playing that I could feel just listening to this album. Desperado sounds like a band of guys that were born to play together. You can hear and feel the connection these guys had with each other. Yeah, it wasn’t the most original stuff and they weren’t trying to re-invent the wheel but Desperado was a great band that was never given the chance. The songs on this album are every bit as good if not better than anything their peers at the time were producing. I’m just thankful that this album eventually found its way to the surface. “Bloodied, but Unbowed” is just too good to stay buried.
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