Starring Alice Cooper guitarist Tommy Henriksen and featuring guest spots from Phil Collen and Nikki Sixx, Crossbone Skully’s debut – an unlikely concept album about an avenging superhero from the far reaches of space, who's here, like Flash Gordon before him, to save Planet Earth – might be dismissed as yet another underwhelming vanity project were it not for the involvement of superproducer Robert John ‘Mutt’ Lange, who, we’re told, emerged from retirement to serve as executive producer on Evil World Machine.
Whether this is a purely ceremonial role or an actual working contribution remains unclear, but Mutt’s sonic fingerprints are all over the album, from the giant, propulsive riffs and the giant, clattering drums to the giant gang vocals that give lift to the giant, swaying choruses.
It’s almost hilariously Muttish, an AC/Leppard mongrel that’s 50% party soundtrack and 50% time travel. Everyone’s On Dope is a medical miracle, somehow combining both eras of AC/DC into one glorious thudding package, The Last Night On Earth is a better Def Leppard ballad than Joe Elliott & co. have come up with in a number of decades, and then there’s Let’s Bust The Trust, which somehow sounds like Massive Wagons covering the Dropkick Murphys.
It might be gloriously daft, but it’s also glorious.
