688. The Rods / Heavier Than Thou. 1987. 3/5

Following on from their previous release, Let Them Eat Metal, The Rods have backed up here with an album of differing quality and direction. Half of it appears to be an effort to blow the speakers off your stereo in both speed and sound, while the other half could in some ways be considered a plagiarism of another famous band's best assets.

Opening up with the instrumental chorusing of "Heavier Than Thou", the album starts off with a bang with the hard rocking anthem of "Make Me A Believer". This is followed up by the equally good "Angels Never Run". Both songs have the best aspects of The Rods' better work, a feisty pace driven along by a great drum beat and guitars, some excellent guitar riffs and solos, and high intensity vocals that provide some catchy lyrics. Great stuff.
"Crossfire" is almost a crossroads of the album, a point where you will decide whether or not this has any promise. Moving the style back into a power ballad area, this has the hallmarks of a Whitesnake ballad of the 1980's, with the song and vocals all carrying a very Coverdale emotive feeling about them. This is how the song progresses, until the final minute, when it breaks into a much faster pace as the guitar solo kicks in to finish the song on a high note. Whether this works for you or not will probably dictate whether you enjoy the remainder of the album. It really is a two-part song, which seems a little strange no matter how many times you listen to it.
Now we really move into the generic hard rock material, both musically and lyrically, that sometimes almost gag-worthy kind of stuff that, if you grew up listening to it you can probably take it, but if you did not then you could easily write-off as trash. "I'm Gonna Rock" still shows its Whitesnake tendencies. "She's Trouble" moves along at a cracking pace, a real hard rocking number extolling the virtues of the wily female that all bands seemed to meet sometime during their performing days. Then we move onto "Born to Rock", because we all know that EVERYONE is born to rock! These three songs in particular are very much tied to this metal scene of the mid-1980's. Generically they are all of  similar performance as anything you could name from bands such at Ratt and Dokken and Britney Fox from the same era, and quite honestly are equally as well done in my opinion. When it comes to whether or not you like these songs, well, isn't it just like any style of music from the 80's? It might be 'bad' but you still 'love' it. And feel free to add in "Chains of Love" here too. The lyrics might be a tad too much to take sometimes, but the music is doing all of the right things.
Just for fun, there is even a cover Led Zeppelin's classic "Communication Breakdown", that the band has a lot of fun playing with. There is a major return to the Whitesnake sound for "Fool for Your Love", again in both the tempo and in Feinstein's vocals. "Cold Sweat and Blood" avoids this similarity, and concentrates once again on a solid rhythm section, a breakout guitar solo and strong vocals throughout.

I first went into this album not expecting anything out of the ordinary, and to be honest that's what I found. But what did impress me was that their 'ordinary' songs here are actually good hard rock songs, with plenty of enthusiasm throughout and punchy, catchy tunes. It may not be to everyone's taste, and it may not be a remarkable album, but it can't be accused of not providing the listener with an enjoyable 43 minutes.