Steel Panther unleash their debut album 'Feel The Steel'. The Steel Panther "story" begins some 20 years ago when the hardest rocking metal band of the era forged their own legenday status on the Sunset Strip, Los Angeles, inspiring bands like Anthrax, Warrant and Jane's Addiction to form, only to disappear without a trace on the cusp of signing a major label deal, which would guarantee them worldwide adoration. Steel Panther is a band that wants it's cake and to eat it as well. Mercilessly lampooning the excesses of 80s LA metal, while being a superior LA metal band themselves. For the most part, this works exceptionally well; the level of detail is staggering. They are, musically, more on a par with the better hair metal bands (Winger, Dokken), and are certainly a better band than the likes of Poison or Motley Crue. Guitarist Satchel, aka Russ Parrish, is a Mark Varney approved, Paul Gilbert protege, who cut his teeth with Rob Halford; a seriously top notch player. However, things are not all fine and dandy, there's a couple of points on the album where the parody element weakens the music; "Fat Girl", "Party All Day" and "Girl From Oklahoma" aim their sights at specific songs and resultingly, come across as a heavy metal Barron Knights; fine if they were just a mere parody band, but as they have so much musicianship, they are closer to the "humorous but quality music" of the likes of Zappa & Bumblefoot than mere "comedy music", a la Weird Al Yankovich. Also, the gags, around a certain couple of (ahem, rather rude) subjects, get a bit too repetetive, to be honest. In truth, the non-stop onslaught of debauchery does get a little repetitive after a while, but when it's done well, like on Asian Hookers or Community Property, you can't help but laugh out loud (partly in shock that they were actually allowed to put some of that stuff on a record).A complete winner in my humble opinion. The massive solos and riffs and the obvious huge ammount of talent emitting from all parties make this humorous little blast too good to resist. I hope to be hearing more from the Panthers very, very soon and look forward to chuckling my keester off to them again and again!
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED
