Rebel Meets Rebel
Rebel Meets Rebel (3 stars)
Before his onstage murder in 2004, former Pantera guitarist Dimebag Darrell teamed up with his ex-Pantera mates drummer Vinnie Paul and bassist Rex Brown to record Rebel Meets Rebel, a collaboration with outlaw country legend David Allan Coe. The album, which has the loose, casual feel of a jam session among inebriated friends, now stands as the last thing Dimebag ever put to record.
As a eulogy for a guitar god, Rebel Meets Rebel may fall a little short, but as a one-off lark it's great fun, and the enthusiasm of everyone involved comes across on every track. Coe meets the Pantera crew on their territory—despite the fiddle on the title track, this is a metal album through and through, and far more creative than the trio's other post-Pantera project, Damageplan, which just felt like a pale imitation of their old band.
Rebel Meets Rebel sounds like something genuinely different, a more Southern-fried brand of metal than the brutal assault that Pantera was known for. Sometimes Coe's voice doesn't quite have the power to match Dimebag's guitar, but what he lacks in force he makes up for in attitude. "Cowboys do more dope than rock 'n' rollers," he sings on "Cowboys Do More Dope," and you know he speaks from experience.
SECRET MACHINES
Ten Silver Drops (2 stars)
Insomnia sufferers, flush that medication. There's a new, drug-free soporific on the market: Secret Machines' sophomore LP Ten Silver Drops. Two years after Now Here Is Nowhere established the Texas trio's Pink Floydian knack for constructing songs simultaneously hypnotic and urgent, this disheartening follow-up abandons all sense of immediacy for aimless lethargy.
That's a bummer, since the indie outfit with an arena-rock flair can be a demon onstage, provided it has inspired material to work with. Judging from these eight tunes, Secret Machines' fans will yearn for the vigor of the band's 2004 and 2005 shows as they shift uncomfortably in the pit at one of this year's tour dates.
Ten Silver Drops actually opens as a promising next chapter, with first cut "Alone, Jealous & Stoned" packing some dreamy punch. From there, though, the disc falls off markedly, hitting a nadir with the plodding, purposeless "Daddy's in the Doldrums." Intended to sound epic, the eight lengthy tracks never re-create the drama of momentous early works "Nowhere Again," "Sad and Lonely" and "The Road Leads Where It's Led."
Ivano Bellini
The Gryphon Sessions (3 stars)
A Swiss native, Ivano Bellini is cofounder of Sounds For People Records and is credited with being one of the fathers of Miami's house scene and sound. This album is a live recording—later mastered in-studio—from one of his other residency gigs, the Gryphon nightclub in Florida's Hard Rock Hotel and Casino.
The compiled 14 tracks of electro-house throb and pulse at an even beat, helped along with producers and remixers such as Dirty Vegas' Paul Harris and Satoshi Tomiie.
Martin H and Oliver Klein's "Club Game" retains the haunting slight-of-tongue vocals, sliding "club game" and "cocaine" back and forth. Slok's "Lonely Child" is sadly too short, but Bellini coasts right into a trancey vocal mix of Harris' "Breathe You In." Outwork's "Electro," at six-and-a-half minutes, goes on three minutes too long, and "Shining Star" and "Stoppage Time" also drag.
And that's the album's main problem: It needs the flashing lights, drinks and a better sound system than my Dell to transport me into one of Bellini's sessions. As it stands, with Bellini cherry-picking and then cleaning up tracks, it comes across as a hybrid between a true live album and a studio creation. And not an entirely successful one.