Ugly Kid Joe – "Rad Wings of Destiny"
The art of spreading a career thin with the least amount of effort
I've been saying this for a matter of fucking DECADES now: Ugly Kid Joe's second and third albums, 95's "Menace to Sobriety" and 96's "Motel California", were by far the most interesting outputs the band's ever done. That '92 debut was silly when it came out, and it's not gotten better with age. But time was, UKJ actually did know how to put out hard-hitting, edgy, actual heavy metal that you could take seriously.
And now, those two great albums have another deformed younger sibling to put them into perspective. (The first one being 2015's "Uglier Than They Used ta Be").
Out of the 10 songs on "Rad Wings of Destiny", THREE songs actually rock. And those are more or less straight-up carbon copies of this little band called AC/DC. And we're not only talking similar riffs; opener "That Ain't Livin'" has the carbon copying going on down to the guitar tone, the Bon Scott-esque blues melody and phrasings, and the Angus Young style fingerpicking.
I mean... Why open an album with that?
In fact, why not actually leave the task of writing AC/DC songs to AC/DC, or at least keep it to a B-side? – And all the more so when you're a relatively big name yourselves?
Why in Ozzy's name anyone would make an alleged hard rock album, its title even spoofing Judas fucking Priest, only to have FOURTY FUCKING PERCENT of the songs be acoustic, I cannot for the life of me understand.
Then there are the straight-up rock tunes that do belong to the genre, but seem to be written on autopilot and wouldn't stick if you somehow upholstered them with velcro and dipped them in resin. "Not Like the Other" weirdly manages to be a boring party rock song. Its bridge section is acceptable, but that's never saved an otherwise plodding and uninspired tune. And the chromatically descending bass notes in "Up in the City" just plain annoyed me enough to skip to the next track on my second playthrough. Seriously, some of those most hackneyed songwriting tropes should require a special permit at this point.
Then there are the 4 acoustic songs – and again, we're talking out of 10 tracks here. Why in Ozzy's name anyone would make an alleged hard rock album, its title even spoofing Judas fucking Priest, only to have FOURTY FUCKING PERCENT of the songs be acoustic, I cannot for the life of me understand.
And those songs largely hit the same level of uninspired filler material. At least "Everything's Changing" is kinda pleasant in and by itself, not trying to be something it's not. And the heavy bridge section with the background choir voices in "Kill the Pain" is actually pretty cool. But it amounts to fighting global warming by quitting smoking.
95's "Menace to Sobriety" and 96's "Motel California", were by far the most interesting outputs the band's ever done. And now, those two albums have another deformed younger sibling to put them into perspective.
And then there's that completely unnecessary cover of The Kinks' "Lola". I'm guessing it's a record company idea, because, "Hey, they did that cover of "Cat's In the Cradle" once and got a big hit, so this might totally work!" And while UKJ does manage to infuse the classic with some power and dynamics, it still amounts to wasted time. Like most other stuff on here.
While "Failure" still sounds like AC/DC, it's the tune that does it the least, having more of a legato drive, a fatter guitar sound, and a more serious vibe, so in terms of replayability and – relative – originality, that one ends up as the best song on here. But it doesn't take a lot – especially being crammed in between two acoustics, one being a pointless, unfunny country pastiche. And coming in at number 9, it's too little, too late.
Henceforth, while I'm probably gonna be seeing UKJ at early-afternoon festival gigs if no one else is playing and I'm not too hungover, I'm not gonna be holding my breath for any remotely interesting albums from their hand in the future. But then again, I stopped holding said breath in the late '90s anyway.
Rating: 2 out of 6
Genre: Hard rock / butt-rock
Label: Metalville
Release date: 21/10/2022
Producer: Don't know, don't care...