Liked this more than I thought I would. For decades, my only exposure to this album was the video for "We Got the Power" on Metal Blade's Video Meltdown VHS, which I thought was overly commercial and corny. I remember my favorite local CD store had 2 copies of this disc in the racks for years, but between prioritizing much better stuff and being turned off by the aforementioned music video, I never bothered buying one.
Going into this with lowered expectations probably helped, as it's far more of an '80s hard rock opera than a metal album. It's not completely devoid of metal (the title track is probably the best song of the bunch), but it's nowhere near as heavy overall as any previous Lizzy Borden album. While the band's image was obviously heavily rooted in a sense of theatricality, here it extends quite a bit into music. But rather than taking on a lot of proggy tendencies, this is a deeper exploration of the commercial aspects that were already on Visual Lies in spades, with a big focus on the multi-layered vocal melodies and hooky riffs. It's not as heavy as I would have liked, but it's done pretty tastefully, and even "We Got the Power" stands out as being vapid compared to the other tracks. It's also the last track, making it seem like a afterthought, like a grab for a commercially viable single or something.
This is another case of an album being fine for what it is, it's just that "it" happens to be something I'm rarely inclined to want to throw on and listen to. For all its slickness and catchiness, none of these songs have the immediate appeal to me as any song from Love You to Pieces, which I consider to be one of the great USPM albums. Still, well worth 2 bucks, even if only to fill the gap in my collection.
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