  
Red Dragon Cartel is the new band formed by former Ozzy Osbourne guitarist Jake E Lee. Jake E Lee played on two of Ozzy's albums ("Bark at the moon" and "The ultimate sin", before forming his own band Badlands. Since the demise of Badlands he's been absent from the music industry but now he's back with this new band. Red Dragon Cartel are due to release their debut album at the end of January.
Alongside Jake E Lee and his new bandmates, there are several special guests on the album including Robin Zander (Cheap Trick), Paul DI'Anno (ex Iron Maiden), Maria Brink (In this moment), Rex Brown (ex Down & Pantera), Jeremy Spencer (Five Finger Death Punch).
Brief comments on a few songs from the album..
The album kicks off with some great in your face guitar riffs as "Deceived" starts, then the vocals kick in and things just go from strength to strength. It's a great heavy rock track and an excellent start to the album.
"Big Mouth" stands out as it features In This Moment singer Maria Brink on vocals - the only song on the album with female vocals. SHe performs with her usual mix of singing and screaming style vocals which works very well.
"War Machine" is a song that will instantly make you think of a well known band. Once the intro ends, there's a really strong Black Sabbath feel to the song. Much of that comes from the guitar riff - as soon as that riff starts you think of Black Sabbath, and the vocals add to it too - D.J Smith shows how versatile his voice is with a real Ozzy sound here which differs noticeably from other songs on the album.
This is a great album. Froma guitarist as good as Jake E Lee you expect an album that's packed with great guitar work, but this goes beyond that - it's not just guitar solos with songs written around them in the way you'd expect from say Yngwie Malmsteen, but instead you get proper well written high quality songs that also happen to include great guitar work but that sits alongside great vocals and a great performance from the rest of the band - in short this is an album by a proper band rather than a guitarists solo album masquerading as a group album.
An excellent album packed full of great hard rock/metal songs.
The album will be released on 27th January 2014 on Frontiers records.
Track listing:
1. Deceived
2. Shout it out
3. Feeder (featuring Robin Zander)
4. Fall from the sky (seagull)
5. Wasted (featuring Paul Di'Anno)
6. Slave
7. Big mouth (featuring Maria Brink)
8. War machine
9. Redeem me (featuring Sass Jordan)
10. Exquisite tenderness |
