Lizzy Borden – Appointment With Death

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Metal Blade
Produced by Joey Scott Hughes & Lizzy Borden

Legendary, but somehow oft disregarded, vocalist Lizzy Borden, who’s first album came out way back in 1985, along with original drummer Joey Scott Hughes, have a new-look and a new guitarist (ex-Metal Church player Ira Black) for their first album in seven years; a concept album about Death, naturally.

What the story of the album is, I couldn’t possibly say, but I doubt it’s particularly profound. What I can say is the thought of a concept album shouldn’t put off ardent metal fans at all in this case, as Appointment With Death is non-stop metal with an emphasis on Lizzy’s high vocals and wailing guitar solos. Abnormal, for instance, opens with a guitar solo (courtesy of Corey Beaulieu from Trivium); pure Primal Fear melodic power metal. The title track follows the same route and maintains the quality.

Live Forever is the first break from the high-speed power metal assault of the opening brace. A mid-paced, more considered track has darker overtones than the previous bright pair, it presents a very different feel, and is something that’s not revisited until Somethin’s Crawling at track nine.

The first three tracks neatly side-step the “cliché” pitfalls, but no such luck with Bloody Tears, The Death of Love (featuring George Lynch) and especially Tomorrow Never Comes. Solid enough, if very standard, power metal songs with some great solos from time to time, but some pretty horrible lyrics in places which let them both down – definitely the story-telling portion of the album. The stock galloping Maiden-esque chorus to The Death of Love does it no favours either.

Then things really fall apart with the appalling pop-punk-rock of Under Your Skin, with its sickly radio chorus and mundane ‘riff’. It seems after the great promise shown by the opening three tracks the album ends up letting down that initial prospect. Thankfully the Judas Priest style lead guitar into to Perfect World (I Don’t Wanna Live) signals a return to the quality of the first three tracks, and the slow, purposeful riffing and ominous chorus of album-highlight Somethin’s Crawling cements it. Back on track.

(We Are) The Only Ones is more of the same, with length and wonderfully melodic solos and The Darker Side does the same. The closing four songs are comfortably up to the calibre of the first three. It’s just a shame that the middle three let things down. But a good start and end is better than all the good songs being in the middle of the album. It leaves a positive after-taste come the end, instead of a negative one. The acoustic version of Tomorrow Never Comes, an unlisted bonus track, improves on the electric version, but still can’t get away from the poor words.

The guitar tone on this record is somewhat thin compared to the high-end production values most current metal bands enjoy, and the whole thing would definitely have benefited from a fuller, meatier sound. Otherwise it’s seven tracks of excellent, melodic heavy metal versus three tracks of clichéd and uninteresting heavy metal. At least that’s comfortably in favour of the positive.

“ wonderfully melodic ”

Tracklist: Abnormal / Appointment With Death / Live Forever / Bloody Tears / The Death of Love / Tomorrow Never Comes / Under Your Skin / Perfect World (I Don’t Wanna Live) / Somethin’s Crawling / (We Are) The Only Ones / The Darker Side / Tomorrow Never Comes (Acoustic)

Written by Andy Lye
More: Albums, Power Metal, Lizzy Borden