Skid Row – "The Gang's All Here"

Ever wish you could just draw a line in time and get a completely fresh start...?

Not surprisingly, the above rhetorical question is hella related to the topic at hand. Enter, Skid Row's 6th full-length, "The Gang's All Here".

"Hell or High Water's" gnarly opening riff shreds the air like a siren signaling that shit's about to get wicked – which it then proceeds to do. This is everything that hard rock is supposed to be: Careless, reckless, and irreverent. With an attitude that says, "We're kicking all of your sorry asses right now; we know it, and that's just what's up".

Skid Row have not sounded this much like themselves since those two first albums around the turn of the '90s which put them on the global hard rock map and have pretty much been the entire justification for their continued existence since then. I'll gladly admit that I haven't heard those two supposedly unimportant studio albums that the Row have released since '95s "Subhuman Race". But I will still just as gladly say that this one coulda easily come before that one. Hell, instead of it.

... Well, had it not been for the fact that back then, the ace up the band's sleeve was only around 8 years old. Indeed, apart from the solid songwriting here, what truly makes this newest incarnation of Skid Row feel so wonderfully vigorous and familiar are the pipes of their new vocalist on the block.

35-year-old Swede Erik Grönwalls voice is perfectly blistering; his wailing screams are tough as leather. In fact, he not only sounds like the band's legendary vocalist Sebastian Bach, but he does so to an extent where you'd be forgiven for mistaking the two.

With Grönwall having only joined the band this year, it feels like they're still kinda getting to know each other creatively. So the backbone here are those rippingly impudent, distorted blues riffs and the constant energy. And as for stand-out elements, there aren't exactly a lot.

Sure, they're there. The uptempo "Not Dead Yet", say, is verging on pure heavy metal. The rhythm figure in the slow, heavy "Time Bomb" sounds like it could've been written by this one little riff-maestro named Tom Morello. And the triplet-beat "October's Song" is that mandatory track with clean guitar. Yeah, gotta have one of those.

But overall, "The Gang's All Here" is largely a display of tough motherfucker hard rock like it's supposed to be. And even though there might not be a new "Monkey Business" or "Youth Gone Wild" here, we're still spared those more-corny-than-necessary early-day moments like "Get the Fuck Out".

Yes, quality-wise, this album is at least as solid and consistent as the Row's two classics, and if it'd come out in that same period, it woulda been just as big of a classic as the two. (And yes, I just fucking wrote that).

Indeed, the title and lyrics in "Resurrection" are extremely self-aware. But the material is more than sufficiently bulletproof to pull it off. And the borderline-heavy metal closer "World on Fire" sounds like anything but an album closer – which may also very well be intentional.

In any case, if the Row could've ever been considered gone, this year, they're just plain back. It's a goddamn pleasure, and it's about bloody time.