468. Fozzy / Happenstance. 2002. 3.5/5

Fozzy had started life as Fozzy Osbourne, the brainchild of guitarist and vocalist Rich Ward of the band Stuck Mojo. It was originally supposed to be just a fun side project, and included then wrestling superstar Chris Jericho on vocals. The band was actually courted by Metal Blade Records and they filmed a "mockumentary" that aired on MTV. The show provided a fictional back story about the band, alleging that the members of Fozzy had in fact written many of the more popular 1980s metal songs, but that an unfair contract had forced the band to remain in Japan for the past 20 years, allowing other acts to take credit for the compositions. This was still in effect when it came to writing and recording “Happenstance”, with all of the band members credited under humorous pseudonyms such as Mongoose McQueen and Duke LaRue. And, as with the debut album, the majority of the songs on the album are cover versions of other bands songs, but of course the story is that they are actually songs written by Fozzy and stolen by those other bands over the years. What makes this more interesting is the originals that the band has produced, mixed in with the songs that everyone already knows, to judge just what Fozzy has to offer.

On the follow up to their debut album, Fozzy have doubled their original songs output from that first album. It contained just two originals, whereas here on “Happenstance” the band has four, and they are all very good songs, excellent in fact. The opening instrumental “Whitechapel 1888” punches straight into “To Kill a Stranger”, which was also the album’s first single. This song was used in the WWE for a time around its release, giving the cross promotion between Jericho’s two personas a boost. This was followed by the title track which is another excellent track. The final two originals are sandwiched between the cover songs that the band plays, and they blend in nicely into the album. “Crucify Yourself” has great power while “With the Fire” also has its moments. These songs show the ability of the band to produce their own songs, something that would eventually be a push towards the future.
When it comes to the cover songs on the album, Chris Jericho in particular has taken on some of the giants of the industry in regards to the songs that the band does and the singers who sing them. Trying to replicate vocals from the legends of the genre, including Rob Halford for Judas Priest’s “Freewheel Burning”, Ronnie James Dio for Black Sabbath’s “Mob Rules”, Klaus Meine for Scorpions’ “Big City Nights”, Blackie Lawless for W.A.S.P.’s “L.O.V.E. Machine”, Udo Dirkschneider for Accept’s “Balls to the Wall” and Bruce Dickinson for Iron Maiden’s “Where Eagles Dare” is as close to madness as one could possibly come. And t be perfectly honest he does a great job with all of them. The band does a great job in honouring the original versions, not straying too far from how they were originally recorded, and Jericho gives a great vocal performance.

Like most of the band’s early fans, I picked up on this through recommendations given to me through heavy metal message boards that existed at the turn of the century, and through a WWE wrestler becoming the lead singer of a heavy metal band. It’s hard not to bite at that and come in and check out what they are doing. I came across both of the first albums at the same time, which gave me the chance to play them back to back often and for some time during those years of 2002 and 2003. It was like having a best-of mixtape with a cover band doing all these great tracks. But I guess what was important for me was that I did enjoy the originals that the band had written, and even then I wondered firstly if the band would actually stick together seeing as it had started as a side project for all of the players, and secondly would they ever decide to put out a full original album.
And I’m pretty sure the band knew that if they were going to be taken seriously, and if they wanted success, that they had to become the band they were rather than the band that the backstory had proclaimed them to be, and to release an album full of only their own material rather than cover songs. And to their credit, this is exactly what they ended up doing, and it did create the kind of reaction that gave them the coverage they were looking for.
I still enjoy this album when I put it on, though as I have often said on this blog, when it comes to albums of cover songs, eventually you will want to gravitate back to the originals rather than continue listening to the cover band. But it is still great to hear how the band sounds on this album, and then how they sounded going forward. But that story is for another episode down the track somewhere.