OK so here we have it – Inglorious’ twist on the cover album – a band with a great male vocalist taking on songs made famous by women. OK fair enough concept but how does it sound? In truth it’s a rather more of a mixed bag than I expected.
Opening with a Whitney Houston song might just be designed to shock you and push your boundaries, but the truth of it is far more boring. If you asked me to define all I hated about corporate music in the 80’s Whitney Houston would have been it. Of course with three decades of far shittier chart music after that Whitney seems almost palatable now. Sadly ‘Queen of the Night’ whilst actually sounding like a rock number is strangely forgettable. and I imagine a song written by an army of writers, (I honestly have no desire to hear the original or find out who wrote it).
Barracuda just shows you can have all of the style and technique in the world and still not capture the true genius of the original. You touch a classic you have to do it justice, that’s all I’ll say.
The Mylie Cyrus song that thankfully I had never heard gets a modern Rock treatment that ‘m not a fan of. The great Steve Marriott once said a great song is a great song no matter how you treat it, it appears that the musing is equally true of forgettable songs because lets face it ‘Midnight Sky’ as a song could well be found under the definition of ‘extremely average’.
‘Nutbush City Limits’ gets a big tick, it’s a lovely cover and nicely done.
Nathan’s falsetto at the start of the Evanescence cover ‘Bring Me To Life’ and almost Seal-like intro to the verse is not good, technically it’s flawless but if you’re comparing it to the original for me warning bells would have been going off saying “Maybe this isn’t one to cover” even the dirty backing vocals sound half-hearted. Sure Nathan excels on the rock sections but I wasn’t rushing to play that one again.
‘Fighter’ by Christina Aguilera sounds nice and almost has a bluesy rock hint but it’s not a song I would have thought twice about skipping on your average rock album. I almost fell off my chair with how shit the Avril Lavigne ballad was as a song (though again nicely executed) I’m so grateful to the gods of Rock that I’ve only taken in ‘artists like Pink, Lavigne Lavigne and co through casual listening. Even a world class rock act covering them can’t hide how average the song writing is. If I had to pick a winner of all the Pop covers it would be Aguilera but it’s a close call in a low level race.
I don’t like the cover of Joan Jett’s ‘I Hate Myself for Loving You’ which is a song I particularly love. It sounds strangely emotionless like the band is going through the motions. Almost a bit lazy. The Halestorm cover works a bit better, if you love the original you’ll love this but it’s not as good or as passionate (again that word again ‘passion’) as the original.
I was never really a huge fan of Cyndi Lauper’s ‘Time After Time’ though I loved a lot of her music and thought the lyrics were great. Here a rather stripped back version passes muster. As far as vastly overrated artists go Alanis Morrissette had to be the person who was most in the right place at exactly the right time, armed with a huge album of angry woman songs and no sense of the meaning of the word ‘irony’ made her one of the most overrated artists of all time with a set of average songs shouted badly. I honestly don’t like anything I’ve ever heard by her but here Nathan seems to have found his emotion on the last song of the set! I still don’t like the song but I love the performance. If there’s a song that saves this record it’s this final track.
Sadly I have to say this sounds like an “I’m Bored in lockdown’ album, if it had been attacked with a bit more passion and intensity like the final couple of tracks it might have worked better. I just honestly don’t don’t like the song choices. I love Inglorious but I’d rather this hadn’t been released as an album, bonus tracks maybe, a lockdown live show perhaps, but not a full album. This isn’t good and even if you love Inglorious you might not have this on repeat.