At last, the new album from Troy Redfern and it stands up alongside the bunch of singles that have been released from it. I would have to say that it is his most mature and coherent album to date.
To an extent, you know what you are going to get with Troy: Blues based songs that verge on metal, those wicked slide motifs, pounding rhythms, tracks that travel at 150 mile per hour and dynamics that are dangerous for both your speakers and your heart. But, on this album, he has more of a sense of menace and darkness than before. There is even a massive ballad – ‘Blind Me’ – alongside the hugely powerful tracks. On numbers such as ‘Voodoo Priestess’ he somehow manages to conjure up an Alice Cooper vibe (the slide solo is utterly deranged). ‘Van Helsing’ is dark and powerful and it leads into the chilling and eerie ‘The Calling’.
One of my favourite tracks is ‘The Strange’, absolutely classic Troy, with its big, thumping drumbeat and wild guitar shapes and sounds, that somehow manages to get to a point of real joy.
Troy Redfern does a thing. He plays Blues and rock on a completely inappropriate guitar and makes it sound wonderful. This album is the most complete I’ve heard from him to date.
