Last In Line - Heavy Crown

Published February 09 2016

*=Staff's pick	Devil In Me Martyr Starmaker Burn This House Down I Am Revolution* Blame It On Me Already Dead* Curse The Day* Orange Glow* Heavy Crown The Sickness

Genre	Heavy Metal/Hard Rock	Andrew Freeman	Vocals
Tracks	11	Vivian Campbell	Guitar
Running time	50 Min.	-	Guitar
Label	Frontiers Music	Jimmy Bain	Bass
Release	February 19, 2016	Vinny Appice	Drums
Country	USA/UK	Claude Schnell	Keyboard
Producer	Jeff Pilson
Similar artists	---

Last In Line was last year a quartet consisting of 4 former Dio members + the vocalist Andrew Freeman. Since then keyboard player Claude Schnell has parted ways with the band and celebrated bass player Jimmy Bain just recently died from lung cancer. Vivian Campbell has also had a tough time during the last 3 years while fighting cancer, so what will happen with this project from this point and forward, I reckon even the 3 guys in the current lineup don't know.

Quite unsurprisingly, the more I listen to this record, the more similarities with Dio stuff I find. The total production of today is of course different than what it used to be and so are the vocal melodies too, but if you listen more to the details in the actual music, a lot of stuff is highly reminiscent to what these guys did around 3 decades ago when they contributed to songs which still today get massive recognition. The music on this record is obviously heavy and I think that they really try to honor the legacy of Ronnie James by making songs with identifiable grooves, but also by somewhat putting their own mark to the songs in order to not come out as a carbon copy.

The lead vocalist Andrew Freeman definitely does a good job and I hope that no one seriously expects him to sing this type of songs as successful as RJD once did. Freeman is ambitious and doesn't try to copy what was done in the past and since he's doing his vocal parts in his own style I think that he manages to come out humble with his head held high. This is absolutely not an easy task and I believe that most singers, who, hypothetically, would have been asked to jump onboard this ship, would have thought over the decision to front this outfit several times before eventually deciding to join.

The overall song material is perhaps not this record's biggest score, because in this case I basically appreciate more the actual performance and I think that they benefit from coming out as a tribute band before being some washed-out cover band. When I listened to this one for the first time I thought that it was kind of a bland creation, but my view has changed quite a bit since that initial moment, because at this point I can put some value to the whole thing and in the end I think that this is a fairly good album.

Performance	Originality	Production	Vocals	Songwriting
7	3	6	7	5

Summary
6 chalices of 10 - Tobbe