Oz - Burning Leather
Oz comes from an era when this kind of music was just called “Heavy Metal.” To define the sound of Oz in modern terms, this is part old-school Hard Rock and part Power Metal. It has a very accessible sound but without that “party music” vibe that typified LA Butt-Rock from the ’80s. The thing about bands playing in the old Heavy Metal style is that the sound is very dated. Granted, a number of the songs on Burning Leather are re-recorded tracks from their back catalog, so a case could be made that they sound dated because they were written in a bygone era. Still, the old songs are almost indistinguishable from the newer tracks in terms of sound and style. I don’t even know if there is a place in the modern Metal marketplace for a band like Oz anymore. They don’t have the virtuoso guitar playing or the anthemic feel of modern Power Metal bands like Rhapsody, Iron Savior, or Hammerfall, and they have more in common, musically, with bands like Loverboy or Y&T than Iron Maiden, Judas Priest or Black Sabbath. “Turn the Cross Upside Down” is a solid Metal anthem, but that’s one song out of eleven (and it’s also one of their re-recorded older songs). If anything, Burning Leather fails in the most critical area: it doesn’t rock hard enough. This album lacks solid, head banging, fist pumping, Metal songs that get your blood flowing and the adrenaline running through your veins. Burning Leather tries to recapture a swagger that probably disappeared fifteen to twenty years ago. There are moments where that swagger makes a brief appearance, but unless someone ships these guys a case of Viagra, they’re fighting a losing battle against erectile dysfunction.
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