It’s been 14 years now since Crazy Lixx burst onto the scene with the wonderful debut ‘Loud Minority’ and over the years the band has produced some real gems – from follow up ‘New Religion’ to the pre-pandemic ‘Forever Wild.’ All up 6 wonderful studio albums full of fist-pumping 80’s style Hard Rock that would have stood out from the pack back in the day. Album number seven – out this Friday 5th November ‘Street Lethal’ is another gem that you need in your collection!
Starting out with the intro ‘Enter the Dojo’ we blast off with one of my favourites ‘Rise Above’ (Check out the video) – as a fan you immediately know we are onto another winner. I have to say too the production by Dany Rexon sounds wonderfully rich, giving the songs the huge sound arena-sized they deserve.
Single and video ‘Anthem For America’ follows and when you get to third track proper ‘The Power’ you’re already settled into that satisfying Hard Rocking groove and you already know that Crazy Lixx are continuing their unstoppable run. This is a band that just doesn’t seem to be able to contemplate second best!
‘Reach Out’ adds a little mid-tempo slow burn Bon Jovi style; whilst the only slight disappointment – the slow building two minute plus instrumental ‘Final Fury’ really acts as little more than an interlude, before the storming rocker and title track ‘Street Lethal’ hits the pedal to the metal again…
Incredibly the album rounds out just as strongly as it began. Even the song Danny didn’t pen ‘Caught Between The Rock ‘N’ Roll’ which Chrissie Olsson and one of his co-writing friends brought to the table, slips in beautifully with the rest though interestingly without knowing its providence I did tell Danny I thought was a little different when we spoke this week. It’s a wonderfully worked number that has hints of Def Leppard in the mix. ‘In the Middle of Nothing’ too is simply wonderful – a slow-burning ballad that builds to an anthem, and ‘One Fire – One Goal’ a huge hooked rocker!
We close the album with ‘Thief In the Night’ a 7 minute plus epic which sports a rather wonderfully long intro and outro. On the face of it it’s another fine melodic rocker just given a huge production, and it shows just what you can do when you up the ante. On the other it shows just how much ambition there still is to offer more to the already sublime mix.
There really is no keeping Danny Rexon down as far as writing is concerned – he’s already written an album for Chez Cane this year which I know will feature in a lot of people’s favourites of the year and now he’s gone and hit us with this – Crazy Lixx’ 7th record and 7th home run! Where it sits exactly in what is an extremely great back catalogue is your call: what is is to these ears is another world class Hard Rocker up there with anything we got in the late 80’s.
Now to finally catch these guys live!
9/10