According to a certain wizened Jedi master, an overload of anger is a one way trip to red lightsabers, planet smashing and eternal suffering. What the tiny green killjoy fails to mention, though, is that searing rage often creates fantastic music. That's certainly evident here, as Jeff Scott Soto ditches his nice-guy-of-AOR image to embrace the dark side, unleashing a tornado of expansive contemporary metal and expelling some vengeful personal demons in the process.
Wanting to separate 'Inside The Vertigo' from his previous work, the former Yngwie Malmsteen and Talisman vocalist is utilising the Soto moniker to establish that this is a new band with an appropriately fierce new sound.
Making a modern metal record that isn't derivative or too Spinal Tap is challenging, but his rage, combined with a gang of shit hot young musicians who breathe new life into the genre while being suitably reverential, means he's negotiated that challenge superbly.
The ferocious Final Say, written with Adrenaline Mob's Mike Orlando, is a thunderous statement of intent, with explosive riffage, head-pounding drums and suitably kinetic tempo changes underscoring Soto’s war cry.
Equally impressive is Wrath, which was written with Ozzy Osbourne guitarist Gus G and kicks off like something from Metallica's '...And Justice For All' album before cutting loose with head-spinning shredding, militaristic beats and a gallop that recalls vintage Iron Maiden.
This marriage of the old and new is the album's greatest strength. The Fall, for example, starts like a Marilyn Manson stomper embellished by electro touches, but boasts a pounding staccato chorus with vintage fist pumping heft. The drop-tuned brutality of Karma's Kiss adds elements of Alice In Chains, When I'm Older soars with a bleak, lighter-waving beauty and synthesiser touches, which recall Kevin Moore-era Dream Theater, colour many of the cuts.
The epic End Of Days, with its world in meltdown narrative, features apocalyptic acoustic picking, a haunting kids choir and melancholy strings that build to a raging tempest of thrashy riffs, orchestral bombast and scintillating six-string passages.
Soto has always had one of the most comforting and believable voices in rock, allied to a natural ability to craft memorable hooks. Both remain, although his singing here drips with authentic rage, while his chorus-writing smarts have been spiced up with a post-millennial Shinedown and Foo Fighters sting on Break and Jealousy.
Soto’s musical muse has taken him on many different paths, but he now plans to give 100% of his energy to this band and its harder hitting aesthetic. Which is truly splendid news, for when DarthSoto's in this kind of mood, the results are impressive. Most impressive.
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