Sebastian Bach: Angel Down : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

"I'm calling all the shots tonight/I'm like a loaded gun": The shredded screech is unmistakable, but it's not ex-Skid Row throat Sebastian Bach. It's his buddy Axl Rose of Guns n' Roses, taking a break from obsessing over Chinese Democracy to join Bach on a cover of Aerosmith's "Back in the Saddle." Angel Down is Bach's first solo album in eight years, yet Rose all but steals the sense of event in three duets here, which also include "(Love Is) A Bitchslap," a cheap-shock title for a bolt of crude, early G n' R, and "Stuck Inside," which pits Rose's sandpaper yelp against squealing-fuzz guitar. On his own, Bach scrapes away the hair-rock gloss of his old band for brittle speed-metal distortion and a raw, bleating vocal style with a lot of Rob Halford. There is some late-Eighties rewind in the power ballad "Falling Into You"; "You Don't Understand" comes with Seventies UFO-style riffing. In fact, more of each would have broken up the repetitive thrash that makes the latter half of the album feel like one righteously hard but overlong song.