Music reviews. CD reviews. Critically hip!

Van Halen is on tour. Nikki Sixx has a new CD. Power ballads are all over the radio. Here come the 1980s. That’s not a bad thing. The whole hair band/ heavy metal thing kind of disappeared before everyone was ready for it to go away, and it took a generation or so for a whole new audience to be exposed to it. The members of the quartet EndeverafteR probably weren’t even born when Van Halen recorded 1984, or, if they were, they were of an age where a bare breast promised nourishment as opposed to seduction. Anyway, we are now well into the first decade of the 21st Century, and everything old is new again. Including Kiss or Kill, EndeverafteR’s debut release.

EndeverafteR is somewhat derivative, but wtf, it’s hard not to like what they’re laying down here. An hour ago I was out driving around with Gotta Get Out blasting on my car stereo (you can’t do that with an ipod, can you, Junior?) and was running down the list of prequisites: anthemic choruses? Check! Great guitar solos? Yes! Power chords? You bet! Influences? Everybody who is loud and proud! Even the Raspberries! There’s even a song entitled Poison which sounds like…three guesses who! And it’s great! There’s even a respectable power ballad, Next Best Thing, that I haven’t been able to get out of my head recently, or off of my stereo, for that matter. All Night has a bit of a Tom Keifer riff going for it, though it doesn’t really sound like a Cinderella tune, though Long Way Home, an acoustic number, could have been on HEARTBREAK STATION. Actually, there’s nothing awful on the whole of Kiss or Kill, which is really something these days. 

While EndeverafteR functions basically as a support system for lead singer/lead guitarist/songwriter Michael Grant, (and hey, it’s not like any metal band was the Beatles or something), Tommi Andrews (bass), Kristan Mallory (guitar) and Eric Humbert (drums) all sound to be his equal on their respective instruments. All in all, Kiss or Kill is da bomb. Three or four potential singles, lots of energy, and nicely produced. If that’s not enough for ya, you’d bitch if you were hung with a new rope. Check ‘em out!