Gary Moore
Scars
Sanctuary
Gary Moore has made a career of straddling the line between hard rock (as a member of Thin Lizzy) and the blues. On his latest release, Scars, he erases the line completely, and the results? Well, about as bad as you can imagine. Playing in a trio format with Skunk Anansie bassist Cass Lewis and Primal Scream drummer Darrin Mooney, Moore comes off sounding like that annoying kid at the music store trying to play Metallica licks on a purple guitar at ear-melting volume, oblivious to the world around him, fleeing for their lives. Moore has stated that listening to people such as System of a Down and other “heavy” bands prompted his move into this sort of sound, but he has missed an elemental fact about such music – namely, its all hard rock music, not the blues. Moore attempts some bizarre merger of B.B. King, Jimi Hendrix and… oh… Korn? His guitar tone, such as it is, sounds completely out of a cheap fuzzbox, with no personalization, just an ugly smear of screeching, trebly crap. Even on songs such as “Who Knows,” where he drops the volume back and plays some rather nice, stinging runs, he ruins it all on the choruses, when he Spinal Taps the amps and plods like a bull in a china shop. The fact that he really doesn’t sing particularly well only adds to this musical migraine. Eech.
Sanctuary Records: http://www.sanctuaryrecordsgroup.com
