11 tracks and a minute and four seconds of ambient noise making up that dreaded first intro track cunningly titled ‘II – Intro’ make up Last In Line’s latest record for Frontiers. The band of course is the band that recorded 2016’s more imaginatively titled ‘Heavy Crown’ – the same who recorded Dio’s ‘Last in Line’ minus keyboardist Claude Schnell and this time round also without bassist Jimmy Bain who sadly passed in the year the debut was released.
Recapturing the glory days of a band without it’s key ingredient and now with even less of their original compliment was always going to be hard but in truth this is a project that so far has fared well compared to similar projects over the years and part of that just might be that in Andrew Freeman really does sound little like Mr Ronnie James Dio.
Like Dio, Last in Line plays that kind of music that straddles Hard Rock and Metal with opener ‘Blackout the Sun; sounding a little like later, harder Thin Lizzy with touches of Soundgarden. And the album continues to recross that line with tracks like ‘Love And War’, and ‘Give Up The Ghost’ exploring the Hard Rock terrain, whilst tracks like ‘Year Of The Gun’ and ‘Electrified’ are more Metallic in aspect.
In truth the rest of the album is equally as solid, I love the guitar on the punchy, yet atmospheric ‘Landslide’ and ‘Gods and Tyrants’ shows where Last in Line could take this sound by simply throwing a little more variety into the mix. It’s the standout for me and sees everyone collectively nailing it.
The album closes out nicely with the brooding, darkness-touched (and maybe ‘most Dio-like of all’) ‘False Flag’ and the muscular ‘The Light’ but at the end, whilst you feel it’s been solid and enjoyable you still yearn that one song that knocks you for six. What you have here is a consistently great album but with no real showstopper.
