Madman’s Lullaby – Nocturnal Overdrive Part 1
Release Date: 27th May 2021
Label: MR Records
Pre-Order/Pre-Save
Genre: Rock, Hard Rock.
FFO: Wasp, Leatherwolf, Sleeze Bees, Guns N Roses.
Review By: Snidely Whiplash
Welcome back to the metalepidemic.com review hotseat. I am Snidely Whiplash, here to tell you about the newest and hottest in metal. We hope you’re enjoying the reviews and the bands. It’s time for the asshole Whiplash to look into another band today! Let’s see what we come up with!
Today we are reviewing MADMAN’S LULLABY and their newest release NOCTURNAL OVERDRIVE PART 1. This one starts with an instrumental, which doesn’t really make much sense to Snidely. It could have been the intro to something or a fade into the first song, but it didn’t fit. Not sure what’s going on there. From there we go into the driving groove of Next Show. It’s a fast rocker that has a very WASP feel to it musically. The vocals are good but the lyrics don’t really sit with me on this one. They’re not bad, or stupid or anything, they just don’t hold onto me the way some of the others do. But hey, that might just be me. Next we jump onto the next couple of songs and I feel like I’m listening to Appetite For Destruction on quite a few of these. The drum beat beginning of Drive Me Crazy is almost Rocket Queen to the point where I thought it was going to be a cover. The groove of In Your Mind immediately brought to mind some more GNR songs. I don’t mind things bringing stuff to mind, but I shouldn’t get that stuck in my head. The intro guitar on the slower Love Don’t Come Easy doesn’t make any sense and doesn’t seem to fit the rest of the song either. It’s like an afterthought someone added to it. The song itself is great. I loved it. I just don’t get that part. The rest of the songs are also great, don’t get me wrong here. There were just quite a few things that kept me from fully getting into the music and I had to point them out.
The guitars of Mr Brett are definitely rocking. He reminds me of Slash at times and Vito Bratta at others. Very good feel and sound to his guitar. The drummer, Eric Arbizu, is tight and rocking hard through the entire thing. I wish he had come up with a little different beat to Drive Me Crazy, but he plays it well. Bassist Louis Barillas is tight and sticks right in the pocket with the drums and even has a cool little moment at 1:13 of Never Too Late that didn’t go unnoticed. Vocalist Chris Michaels has a solid and dramatic voice. His notes are well placed and have a great feel to them.
The songs are all good. They could use a few touches to move towards greatness, like not reminding me so much of another band than the one I’m listening to. The vocals are good, but after a couple songs I feel like I’ve heard them before. So, I went back and listened again. The vocal cadence is similar in most of the songs. Especially if they have a similar tempo. With a little more variety in there I might have been able to feel better about this one. It’s not awful, and it’s a Snidely thing, maybe. But If I feel like I’ve heard this song before, and then I go back and listen to the song two before it, and it’s similar, I have heard it before. Yeah, it’s a style, but within the style there should be variation to keep me excited. I just didn’t feel that here. Sorry, maybe it’s me.
Overall, this isn’t a bad band at all. They worked hard on this release and it shows. They have a lot of good points that I didn’t cover as much as I did the ones that took me away from enjoying this as much as I could have. Will I give PART II a listen? Sure. I hope they saw what I had to offer and worked on those things to be an even better band. But hey, I’m just one Whiplash. Take my opinion however you want!
(3 / 5)
