Armored Saint – La Raza

Every time a band decides to dust off their kit after a long absence and release something new they always bring a hulking great elephant into the room with them. Â 10 years since their last album, Revelation, it’s a warm welcome back to Armored Saint ”“ but my question, glancing across at the pachyderm, can they still make music that is relevant today?Approaching the project from a different angle seems to have aided the songwriting process, according to vocalist John Bush - “To be quite honest, I wasn't thinking in terms of Armored Saint but more like just writing rock music. I felt pretty free with that mentality and the ideas felt very organic.” It’s certainly given the album a fresh, but familiar quality; definitely better for it. Bush’s indicatively strong, yet warm vocal sits over tight, clean basslines and interwoven crunchy guitars ”“ the band’s undiminished class sure does shine through it all. Thank God for that, because they could have played safe and offered us something that would have disappeared amidst the sudden proliferation of classic rock bands on the scene.The album carries with it an initial antagonistic bluster. ‘Head On’, for instance, is a real bruiser of a track - it’s dressed in the pomp of Whitesnake but moves with the ten-foot wide swagger of Pantera. Moving on, there are also strong echoes of the bluesy, jagged music that David Lee Roth, during his brilliant solo career, produced. The classic builds really pay off, especially when these are followed by choruses as catchy as the ones of ‘Left Hook From Right Field’ or ‘Black Feet’. Then there are the guitars which suck you into an obliquely glowering mood before delivering the shots that silence the meat-and-potatoes bass and drum battery to leave you sprawling on the canvas.On the flipside, there’s a disappointing slacking off in the middle of the album, there are a couple of tacky sampled intros that feel like detached afterthoughts and, sadly, one or two creaky tracks that seem to wear their 80s AOR badges with way too much pride (‘Chilled’ reeks of beige Van Halen whilst ‘Little Monkey’ takes a ride on Motley Crue’s ageing back - “I really really smell something funky“). In the main, things are still looking pretty rosy. ‘La Raza’ is, as expected for anything containing the twin talents of Bush and Joey Vera, a fine comeback album that brings the dual worlds of groove metal and rock n’ roll crunching together like two muscle-bound goliaths. Whether the music is relevant enough to be classed as contemporary ”“ well the jury is still out on that one. If the next one casts off the band’s lingering cravings to mimic their former contemporaries, then all doubts will be left behind.