Contemporary? Nope, Last Decade!
New York hard rock outfit Warrior Soul have finally remastered and re released their entire back catalogue, 'Last Decade Last Century' was their debut album back in 1990.
The opening track is unremarkable, it's not bad but it doesn't exactly make you sit up and take notice as it plods along. Tracks like 'We Cry Out' are far more insightful into why Warrior Soul's debut received critical acclaim on it's release, more upbeat and driven it has all the elements you'd want in hard rock and yet the guitar solo's are competent without setting the fret board on fire and the vocals are strong and purposeful without ever straying into the pained warble that many rock singers aspire to. 'The Losers' has a strong chorus and changes the tempo once again but three tracks in and there's already an underlying sense that something here isn't quite right.
The problem with Warrior Soul is that they are a little too hard edged for the poodle hair brigade but not hard enough to be firmly in the metal crew and whilst you could argue that this makes them original it also makes them difficult to get into. It's not that there are good songs and bad songs, it's more like all the songs have good and bad bits and overall it just doesn't work. There are no stunning chord changes, no huge anthemic chorus, no great harmonies and really no truly outstanding musicianship. In a nutshell it's solid but that's about as exciting as it gets.
Put in the context of the time though you can see why it would do well, the metal/rock scene (with a few notable exceptions aside) was looking rather tired and jaded, so when Warrior Soul arrived doing something just a little bit different they naturally caught the eye. They have their moments on this album, songs like 'Trippin' On Ecstacy' work well (despite sounding like The Cult) and the spoken 'Four More Years' is an interesting insight into Kory Clarke's thought process and political stance. The stand out track is probably the final number 'In Conclusion', mainly because it lets rip at the end more than any of the preceding tracks, in hindsight had the sort of energy that the band displays here been evident in some of the early numbers then this would be a far better album.
The three live bonus tracks are poor bootleg quality and will really only be of interest to completists, surely they could have found some radio sessions or interviews instead?