Deen Castronova, Doug Aldrich, and Jack Blades. Those three names do little to really get me excited in all honesty. I mean, ok. Deen is a killer fucking drummer, Aldrich is a great guitarist and Jack Blades is, well, he’s Jack Blades. While this is all true, put the three of them and something really pretty fucking spectacular happens. You get one of the single most infectious, melodic sounding hard rock bands I’ve heard in a while.
Revolution Saints was formed as a vehicle to put drummer Deen Castronva at the forefront as a lead vocalist after one listen to the opening track “Back on my Trail” I can honestly say that Castronova is one of the best fucking hard rock vocalists I have ever laid ears on. I know that he gets to showcase his vocal talents somewhat in Journey but it was really mind-blowing to hear him really delivering it. Another thing I love about this album is that even though he’s a monster shredder, it’s really cool to hear Aldrich dialing it back at times and really playing with a lot of feel. His lead work on “Locked Out of Paradise” was so reminiscent of something Randy Rhoads would’ve done and it totally gave this song an 80’s Ozzy vibe to it.
The harder edged songs such as “Dream On”, “Strangers to this Life”, and “Better World” are the ones that I found to be more appealing to me while the ballads like “Way to the Sun” and “Don’t Walk Away” just sounded way too much like Journey ballads. Don’t get me wrong, I can dig me some Journey but I felt that these songs just sounded a bit too much like Journey and besides, Journey ballads aren’t exactly my favorites but I will say that even these ballads are really fucking well done songs that I didn’t mind listening to. There were just too many of them on one album.
While I really enjoyed the Revolution Saints album I just found it to be a bit too ballad heavy. I really would have loved to hear more of the more melodic, harder edged songs like “Back on My Trail” and “Locked Out of Paradise” as I felt that they were really onto something with those songs. Matter of fact, the way they played on this album makes me believe that they are more than capable of kicking it up a notch or two and really delivering a fantastic hard rock album. This album is a really easy listen but I don’t feel like it’s an album that will change your life or anything. It’s a good, solid, pleasing to the ears rock album that came close to the mark for me but missed it just by that much.
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