Dirty Passion
Different tomorrow
Denomination Records/Transubstans Records
Know the feeling you get when you crank up certain hard rock albums from way back in the day like, say, Skid Row's "Slave to the grind" and you marvel at how, over 20 years later, it sounds as fresh as something that was released last year? That really is the mark of a genius album. On the other hand, there are old hard rock albums out there that just haven't stood the test of time and sound entirely dated these days. Well, Dirty Passion fall into that latter category. Their main problem, of course, is that "Different tomorrow" is a new album. It would have sounded second-rate back in the hard rock heyday and, a good two decades past its sell-by date, it's barely listenable. The musicianship is fine, I'll give them that, but, by Christ, their songwriting skills are not only outdated -- they're abysmal. With the genre having enjoyed a revival of sorts over the past few years we've found a good few bands, both new and old, who have ingeniously reinvented the style, retaining the passion of the early days while managing to sound fresh and exciting. Dirty Passion fail on both counts, and this is an album that succeeds only in conjuring memories of the wealth of terrible bands that were trying to get in on the act back in those heady days of hard rock.
- John Norby
