Regular readers might have been clued in on the fact that I like pop music, so I am not opposed to artists who have a little help from producers. This seems to be the case on Des Rocs’ new album, To Hell and Back (Sumerian Records). If you find yourself like me, going into this album knowing nothing about Danny Rocco, then let’s get you caught up. He got his start playing in a band called Secret Weapons, which had enough connections in the industry to open for Fall Out Boy and Panic at the Disco. Despite writing songs for Zayn from One Direction, it’s unlikely Rocco is going to get called out for being an industry plant, since he is not pretending to be Metal. What they are going for here is big area rock in the vein of Queen, but only focusing on their more flamboyant, soccer stadium shakers than their ventures in prog and disco.
Photo credit: Jimmy Fontaine
The first two songs capture the larger-than-life feel they were going for, then they default into a more early-2000s radio rock formula for “Sing Me Back to Sleep.” The album then becomes about odd pairings of sounds for songs like ” ‘The More She Wants,’ which answers the question of what it would sound like if the pop group Fun covered Bruce Springsteen. What carries the song is Rocco’s passion for singing, which finds him swinging for the fences with each emoted note. His voice is less pitchy than Yungblood’s but lacks the upper register of Adam Lambert.
They crank the guitars up for the song “Riders of the Red Hook.” While the EQ shifted, when it comes to the songwriting, liberal inspiration has been borrowed from their influences. One example of this would be the fact that “The King” works on a similar formula as Joan Jett’s “I Love Rock N Roll,” though it is produced in the style of Queen. You can’t say it’s a retro sound since Queen were so far ahead of their time that they did not encapsulate the seventies or eighties. Even the more original sound of “This Land” takes cues in the verses from the Red Hot Chili Peppers. You have certainly heard worse covers of “Kick Start My Heart” than what goes down in the uptempo rocker they call “The Juice.”
It’s safe to say the wheel isn’t being re-invented here, but that is not the point of this album. Rocco claims that this album was made for outsiders, but as someone who regularly reviews Black Metal, that term, to me, means something more misanthropic than the teenage angst being celebrated here. The intended audience for this pop album, packaged with Marshall stacks in the forefront, is several decades younger than I am. Even at their worst, most teenagers don’t have it that bad, since there are no bills to worry about and they just have to go to school. This album will fit the bill for wha they are looking and serve as an example entry point to rock music for a beginner, more seasoned veterans of rock music have heard this done before, though perhaps not through the filter of such pristine engineering, which is worth the price of admission alone, this album is entertaining and worth a listen if you want to be taken back to a simpler, happier time.
Buy the album here:
https://amzn.to/43swSYt
7 / 10
WIL CIFER
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