3rd Strike – Lost Angel – Review

3rd Strike

Lost Angel (Hollywood)
by Scott Hefflon

Hollywood Records enters the lucrative world of nü metal. Critics hate this shit, fans eat it up cuz Fred Durst represents the dumbfuck in all of us (maybe the same kinda thing that made me like the Crüe when I was 14, seeing as I was only a little smarter than them then), and if you gotta think, yer kinda missing the point of all this. Or something. I read that somewhere, but it was littered with typos and poorly phrased, dig?

3rd Strike are L.A.-based, so the reality of gangs and violence and rap music is understandable, seeing as they’re not bitching “y’all don’t know what it’s like, being male, middle class and white.” That’s from Ben Folds’ dead-on “Rockin’ the Suburbs,” in case your tastes don’t stretch to, uh, good music… 3rd Strike are actually pretty melodic, despite their propensity to slide into rappy/yappy arrangements (even during the heartfelt “Lisa,” a strong, Staind-like power ballad), but none of the songs are interesting enough to make them really stand out.

OK, the cover of Black Sabbath’s “Paranoid” is kinda cool and features DJ Muggs of Cypress Hill, but the constant wall-of-guitar takes the classic riff and makes it sound like Billy Squire’s “Everybody Wants You” (ouch!), the haunting vocals of Ozzy have been replaced by streamlined Ozzy-sounding vocals with a mere fraction of the character, and really, there’s nothing paranoid or metal or fearsome or freaky left to the song, and that’s pretty indicative of how I feel about nü metal altogether.
(www.3rdstrikeband.com)