You, dear reader, owe me. I took this bullet for you. I jumped on this grenade. Crucified myself on this Golgothan cross of shitty, fuckshittyfuckfuck “music”. Listening to this was like being whipped to bleeding by my dad for sneaking a cookie before dinner, and not in the good way.
Sometimes things are bad for so many reasons that you feel like even writing a three paragraph review full of shit jokes about them will still give them more weight than they deserve, just due to the effort involved. And that would be a disservice to the reader. Line of Fire’s self titled release is just such a thing. The worst aspect of mid eighties buttrock; Stryper meets White Lion. LA Glam meets LA Glam with a dose of pseudo Christian theology lite thrown in for added suckness. And released in 2005? There is no excuse. Not even nostalgia. None.
It’s not that easy, of course. So some description.
Guitar = Virtuoso. All the interesting edges washed away clean. Even Journey had a dirtier and more interesting sound.
Drums = Dull and hack. Never steps on the angelic gang choruses with anything distracting or exciting or alive. Might as well have re-used a Beastie Boys backing track from Licensed to Ill.
Bass = Seriously, why even bother?
Vocals = Glamtastic overblown tenor, so sincere and dripping with heart felt gravitas you want to find a diseased anal whore and pay her – WELL – to bitch slap him until his mouth swells shut.
Songwriting = Deadstyle ripped off from a dead style. So bad your asshole will start to bleed the moment the first notes wriggle from your stereo. Imagine everything you hated about the eighties hair scene, then pretend it never died its overdue-before-it-began death.
Production = Also glamtastic. Would make Warrant proud.
Bottom line: You can’t get time back. Once it’s gone it’s fucking gone. Dear, valued and almost sexually craved reader, I beg you: don’t give these people your money. But more importantly, don’t give up fifty minutes of your dwindling time on this shithole world listening to this record. And don’t let people like this think they can dredge up the worst part of metal history and re-sell it to us.
