Album Review: XYZ, "Hungry"

"Every night is Saturday night for us, and hungry is what we are. It's one guitar, one voice, drums, bass, skin, bones, rock n'roll," says XYZ bassist Patt Fontaine, referring to the band's second LP offering. Big words indeed from a band whose previous main claims to fame have been having a vocalist often compared to DON DOKKEN, who, co-incidentally, produced their self-titled 1989 debut! Anyway, let's have a listen and see if they can produce the goods this time...

Hungery has been produced by George Tutko, and contains eleven original tracks penned by the band, and a cover of FREE's "Fire And Water." Side one kicks off with "Face Down" In The Gutter, built around a very George Lynch-ish riff and inspired by the band's drummer, Paul Monroe, who ended up in a horizontal position at a party, having indulged himself just a little too much at the bar!!!

This song sets the mood and feel for the remainder of the album; a big bass, guitar and drums sound with catchy riffs, and sing-a-long choruses. It's rock n' roll party time, and XYZ are here for the duration!

Throughout the album guitarist Marc Diglio leads the band with an impressive display of both heavy riff work, and intense, screeching solos; and his efforts on "Fire And Water" and "When The Night Comes Down" are particularly outstanding, as they show he is capable of speed, technique, and control at the same time. The band have rearranged the FREE classic to suit their own style, but it actually works quite well, and can stand proudly as a tribute to the original. "When The Night Comes Down" sounds like it could be an out-take from a DOKKEN album session just going by the title alone, and, if you didn't know any better, you'd swear it was Don, George, and the boys in happier, pre-split days!

In fact that's the only criticism of this album that springs to mind; there's nothing that makes it uniquely XYZ. The songs are strong; the musicianship's excellent; and the production brings out the best in the band, but it's not enough. If XYZ want to find themselves up there with the big guns they're going to have to do something just a little bit different, a little bit more XYZ. Maybe next time?

Grade C

Nick Douglas
Riff Raff
October, 1991

Revenge...?

Riff Raff was a legendary rock magazine based in London in the late 1980s and 1990s. Edited by the ultimate music biz insider, Mark Crampton, and employing such talents as Mark Blake, Jerry Ewing, Mike Harris, Paul Smith, Chris Collingwood, Alan McCrorie, Simon Robinson, Lyn Guy, Anna Marx, Nick Douglas, Marion Garden, Peter "Grunty" Grant, Joe "The Crow" Mackett, Billy "The Kluck" Kulke, and, lastest and mostest, the incredible Liddell Brothers, Mark (a.k.a. "El Perro") and Colin (a.k.a. "Der Fly"). Unfortunately, Riff Raff was just too R n' R for its own good. A genuine working class rock mag, written, edited, and translated into 16 European languages in a drug-N-Jack-D-fuelled haze, often on the back of motorbikes, with spell checking by our staff of attentive rock bimbos (chosen purely for their blondeness and big knockers), it soon fell behind more trainspotterly, nerdish, and politically correct publications like Q, Kerrang, Mojo, Metal Hammer, and Horse & Hound. This website is an archive and kind of shrine dedicated to the writing of its greatest writers, some of whom, luckily for the Rock Kosmos, still continue to write about music. This is the REVENGE of Riff Raff...Rock on!