Published on Jan 10, 2000
I don’t think I’ve ever heard so much about a specific album
prior to hearing it than I did going into
Smoke This, the latest offering from Lynch Mob. More
specifically, I had to block from my mind the fact that everything
I had heard about this album was painfully bad.
So, into the annex of the Pierce Memorial Archives went I
(actually, into the bedroom, as the missus was watching television
in the living room) with the disc in hand, and I emerged an hour
later, saying only… “What a piece of shit!” With one exception,
Smoke This is a disc that is destined for a date with the
cutout bins.
Think about it, this title opens itself to a flood of opening
lines I could make about the latest outing from former Dokken
guitarist George Lynch. Sure, I thought of using a line like,
“George, what
were you smoking when you recorded this crap?” Or I could
have made a comment about what I thought of the disc once the smoke
cleared. Nah, that’s too easy – besides, it ain’t fun hunting
wounded prey. So we’ll discuss this like civilized people…
then we’ll throw the carcass to the jackals.
(Just a side note… anyone notice that one of the symbols on
the cover art of
Smoke This looks like a mirror image of a symbol used by a
group whose views are, aah, not so nice? Just an observation.)
I can sympathize with Lynch, in some regards. He’s been seen as
the guitar god, “Mr. Scary,” for so many years, and he’s tired of
the whole scene. He wants to try his hand at something new. Fine; I
have no problems with that.
Problem number one: Lynch chooses to use the “Lynch Mob”
moniker. Fine, I know it’s his… but he should have recognized
that he was going to disappoint a lot of fans expecting to hear the
next
Wicked Sensation.
Problem number two: Lynch disposes with the world of metal and
goes instead with a half-hearted, half-assed mixture of weak hard
rock and ganster wanna-be rap. Again, I understand that Lynch
needed a change in his musical routine. But why would he dive
headfirst into a rap-rock collaboration without first checking if
there was any water in the pool?
The results, as you can imagine, are disastrous. Granted, the
rythmic backbone of Gabe Rosales on bass and Clancy McCarthy on
drums have their contributions overlooked as a result of the whole
stew; they deserve some recognition for trying to pull off a decent
performance. But from the opening notes of “World Spinning Away,”
you can hear the collective voice of the audience saying,
“Uh-oh.”
Kirk Harper bounces around the CD tossing out rhymes like he’s
the next Zack De La Rocha. Kirk, you’re not even the next Vanilla
Ice; lighten up. Lynch, for his part, still knows how to work out a
somewhat tasty guitar lick or two in the rhythms, but solos? Forget
about it. The solos on
Smoke This are so pedestrian they sound like
I could play them.
The poor tracks fall from
Smoke This like mosquitoes near a bug zapper. Cuts like
“Hype-O,” “Playalistics,” “When I Rise” and the title track all
will have you looking impatiently at the counter on the CD player,
wondering when this disc is going to end. Even the instrumental,
“Indra’s Art,” falls prey to this nightmare. On the one cut where
Lynch could have stepped up and saved the day, he chooses to make a
noise-ridden track that would have had even Dali shake his head
with disgust.
There is one saving grace on
Smoke This, though – “Relaxin’ In The Land Of AZ,” a track
that does seem to have both words and music come together in a
palatable format. It’s still no masterpiece, but compared to some
of the shit on this disc, it looks like the “Mona Lisa”.
By the way, to whoever prepared the liner notes on this disc…
the word is spelled “absolutely,” not “absolutley”. Haven’t you
ever heard of a fuckin’
spell checker, for Chrissakes?
Lynch seemed to say by his departure from Dokken that he no
longer wanted to be seen as a guitar god. On
Smoke This, he succeeds, but I don’t think this is the way
he wanted to prove himself right. Be sure to leave this disc a wide
berth on your next excursion to the record store.