As if the thunderous hammer of Thor was swung full arc in Valhalla, The Hall of the Slain, coming down to shatter this ever troubled earth into a million pieces, Zakk Wylde of Black Label Society has singularly redefined the world of heavy metal music as we’ve come to know it with this purely masterful follow-up to last year’s classic “Mafia.” Produced by the guitar great himself, executive produced by Michael Beinhorn and mixed by Randy Staub for Roadrunner Records, “Shot To Hell” is oft times lighter with a more poignant delivery than previous BLS efforts, yet nevertheless a totally mercurial rock n roll album for the ages that has some of the most incendiary guitar ripping this reviewer has ever heard in thirty years of listening to the past greats like Hendrix, Page, Clapton, Rhoads, Van Halen, Ray Vaughan, Vai, Satriani and Abbott, clearly making him now one of rock history’s top ten greatest ever to hit the six strings. And unlike most reviewers of this album this year who have flat out denounced “Shot To Hell”, I have seen eight out of those ten guitar giants perform live in person.
The first three tracks ‘Concrete Jungle,’ ‘Black Mass Reverends’ and ‘Blacked Out World’ alone stand as Wylde’s greatest studio creations outside of his work with former Black Sabbath lead singer, Ozzy Osbourne. The riffs are hellafied heavy, dripping with Wylde’s trademark down the road, country-ish vocal stylings. Each of these tracks has been filled to the brim with one intense hook and memorable chorus after the other, all combined with lyrics that even John Lennon himself would be impressed by. A clearcut example from the opening hellion ‘Concrete Jungle’: “The freaks in the streets, the nuns with the shotguns, the graves by your side, survival of the fittest, and there ain’t no pity, no one gets out alive.” In a world of heavy music dominated by mere gutteral grunts and completely incoherent screams, Zakk Wylde shows all of us that great metal songwriting is not about how evil and outright disturbing you sound. Moreover, his utter genius spews forth in its greatest manner at a point in his legendary career when he could have easily just done what he’s done before. Therein lies his utter dominance in musical thinking for he decided to take that pressure and throwback at us something that had never been done before: true depth and pure emotional dynamics in song content. How any critical music reviewer can sit back and lambaste this more fully rounded-out product is more puzzling than the literal corporate ‘red tape’ that bogs rock n roll music down today.
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http://www.metalunderground.com/reviews/details.cfm?releaseid=361
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