Billionaire Boys Club - Something Wicked Comes

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ARTIST: Billionaire Boys Club
ALBUM: Something Wicked Comes
LABEL: Blackbird (Sweden), Polydor (Eur), Polydor (Jap)
SERIAL: BBCD-254, 517 761-2, POCP-1321
YEAR: 1993

COUNTRY OF ORIGIN:
LINEUP: Mark Boals - vocals * Jorg Fischer - guitars * Marcel Jacob, Per Stadin, Magnus Rosen - bass * Anders Johansson - drums

TRACK LISTING: 01 Won't See You Again * 02 Voyeur Romance * 03 Eternal Flame * 04 Something Wicked Comes * 05 No Time to Sleep * 06 Don't Lie * 07 Down Down Down * 08 Can't Last Forever * 09 Send Your Fat Friend Home * 10 Inside Out

Background

A virtual league of nations are the Billionaire Boys Club. With a band title taken from the 1987 movie (surely?), one suspects the title was made in jest. If not, they're rolling in cash and we're none the wiser! Seriously, this league of nations is one part American, one part German, with the remainder flying in from Sweden.

They are all well known from their prior history (Boals and Johansson ex Yngwie Malmsteen, Fischer ex Accept), though a project like this circa 1993 was a brave move both for the band and the label Polydor, considering their style of melodic rock was hardly in vogue at that point in time.

What we get are the powerful vocals of Boals who is less operatic here - more of a straight-out rock approach, singing on top of the guitar heroics provided by Fischer, with a world-class rhythm section to boot. Musically, an amalgamation of all the best LA hard rock bands from the 80's is revisited here with Billionaire Boys Club.

The Songs

Opening up with 'Won't See You Again', the style takes on a personality befitting a band like Black N Blue or Keel.

The tacky lyrics on 'Voyeur Romance' gravitate toward Kingdom Come styled rhythms, while the blues soaked swagger displayed on 'Eternal Flame' is a throwback to those Southern melodic rock bands who know how to pull a power ballad or two (think Tangier or Tora Tora).

Check out the hard-out aggression of the title track 'Something Wicked Comes', taking a leaf out of the pages written by Dokken- a real L.A metal track that one.

'No Time To Sleep' is the album highlight - rich vocal harmonies, and guitar lines that wouldn't be out of place on Ratt's 'Out Of The Cellar' or 'Invasion Of Your Privacy' classics! Similarly 'Down Down Down' follows a similar path.

The band take a musical jaunt over to Europe for the very Talisman sounding 'Don't Lie'. BBC take time out with a vocal/acoustic guitar arrangement called 'Can't Last Forever'. Aptly named because this one was kinda boring.

However, the 'Hot For Teacher' flavoured 'Send Your Fat Friend Home' must be a tribute piece for Eddie VH surely, such is the similarity! The only thing missing was a vocal rap from Boals a la Dave Lee Roth.

Keeping up the LA metal consistency is 'Inside Out', finishing the album in style, with Boals hitting the high register in the vein of Mark Slaughter.

In Summary

The Japanese edition of this now hard to find CD contains two bonus tracks: 'Moshing Pit' and 'Roadle Song'.

Since then, everyone has moved on to other projects. Boals has his own outfit now Ring Of Fire, Jacob of course went to Talisman, Rosen is now the bassist in Swedish power metallers Hammerfall, while Johansson has played with so many artists it would fill the page. Fischer swapped over to bass playing in Versus X and US based tribute band Doom Squad.

This is well worth investigating for LA rock/metal fans, as BBC run the gamut of just about every known act who has ever played the LA Club circuit. Despite the perceived cloning of their sound, it sounds great, and because 1993 was a poor year for melodic rock in general, this one stands out more than most.

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seand

Cool record agree with review