Lucifer is a little band with a winding backstory all centered on the musical vision of frontwoman, Johanna Sardonis. A few years back, Sardonis and guitarist Linnea Olsson came together to form the waaaay underground cult band The Oath. If you never heard of The Oath, don’t fret. They basically broke up the day their debut album was released. Which was a damn shame because the album ended up being a really weird mixture of the first couple of Danzig albums with Dreamboat Annie-era Heart. It was a bad ass album and it’s a shame they couldn’t hold their shit together.
In the wake of The Oath’s demise, Sardonis regrouped with ex-Cathedral guitarist Garry Jennings to create Lucifer. The first Lucifer album was a pretty decent attempt to keep the same sort of creepy and doomy sound of the first album from The Oath going. It was decent, but I didn’t think it quite lived up to the promise The Oath portended.
So, here we are at swing number two from Lucifer. Jennings has left the band and has been replaced by multi-instrumentalist Nicke Andersson of Entombed and The Hellacopters fame. This new collaboration sees Lucifer step in a newer and retro direction that works quite well with Sardonis’ voice. Musically, you’ve got more of a Sabbath-meets-Blue Oyster Cult-meets-old Aerosmith-meets-Alice Cooper with Sardonis playing the mistress of ceremonies with her solid Ann Wilson-esque vocals. It’s really old school rock-n-roll more than anything. Sure, it plays pretty campy and it is fairly derivative in a lot of places, but it’s fun. I can see this one being a great album to crank up on a summer day out on the lake. Grab yourself a pop and feel yourself float back to 1978.
4 flip flops out of 5
DISPATCHES FROM THE VOID 