Josh Todd - You Made Me (Todd Entertainment)
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After the brief but brutal flash metal suicide of Buckcherry and the coulda-shoulda murk of his daze in Velvet Revolver, sleaze king heir apparent Josh Todd returns to the fray with an entirely new band of fresh (as in youngstuff) rock n’ roll meat and comes out swinging for round two of his road-back-the-the-arena- grudge match. It’s Todd VS. the music industry this time, and in a perfectly logical move- I mean, the cat’s got dough, ya know- JT just released this fucker on his own. This might not get him any skinny boy modeling gigs or MTV rotations like last time, but maybe, baby, this ‘un’s just about the goddamn MUSIC, anyway. Now, a few of my fellow sleazebeasts seem to be fretting about “You Made Me” because the track that they fed to rock radio, “Shine”, has more then it’s fair share of ‘pop sensibilities’, but right after I grill ‘em as to why they’re listening to goddamn mainstream rock radio in the first place, I assuage their panic with the assurance that 70% of this album- when it’s not shamelessly trying to get back in the graces of the “music biz”- rocks just as hard as the hardest rockin’ parts of B’Cherry’s last n’ final rekkid “Time Bomb”, and this is even with the significant handicap of having to teach a buncha kids how to rock and roll.

The Best stuff? The hard-ass cock rock fightin’ machine of “Blast”, a self-aggrandizing ode to JT’s own sleazy superpowers. Over a stuttering Black Flag (long-haired versh, natch) meets Van Halen riff, JT spits out his intentions in an annoyed growl: “I’m about to blast/I’m about to fuck it up/I’m about to drop your mama’s angel on the floor”. And later, after an effective Soundgarden-esque chorus, he throws down a little hurricane insurance: “If I don’t last/If I don’t measure up/It’s just because I’m fuckin’ rotten to the core”. Yeah. Try and argue with THAT, man. If there was any question as to why you liked this cat so much in the first place- he IS the only rich rock star you actively listened to, after all- “Blast” will make it pretty fuckin’ clear. All the anger and pathos and wild arrogance Todd made his fame on is still brewing in that painfully thin, badly tattooed frame of his.

Other highlights? The bruising, paranoid glam-grunge of “Straight Jacket” (“4 walls, no windows/No fuckin’ cigarettes”), the vintage Buckcherry flash metal of opener “Mind Infection”, the affecting suicide-glam of “Broken”, and the menacing throttle-rock of “Slaves”. Ok, so yr gonna hate ballads like “Lovely Bones” and “Circles”, but that kinda goes without saying, right? I admit, I’d like it better if JT just gave that shit up completely and played it pedal-to-the-metal all the way through, like he did on Buckcherry’s legendary debut, but what the fuck. The dude likes his puffball ballads. Otherwise, if I played this for you blind and told ya that it was simply Buckcherry’s third album, you’d believe me. And you’d be EXCITED about that, right? Well, be excited, rocker. Be very excited.
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