Review Summary: Enjoyable, yet heavily flawed.
Whether you like him or not, Zakk Wylde is among the last of a dying breed; a guitar hero, a remnant of metal's golden days. And whether you like it or not, he can still write better riffs, leads, and solos than the vast majority of metal guitarists out there. To be specific, he can discard in a day more quality solos than most guys can come up with in a month. However, he has very rarely managed to get everything together for an entire album and
Doom Crew Inc., a tribute to the band's road crew, is a perfect example of that.
The first three tracks constitute a very promising start until the album's first ballad comes up and begins a run of nice yet extremely unspectacular cuts, which brings us to the album's main weakness; the abundance of filler material. To be specific,
Doom Crew Inc. has three ballads which could have easily been limited to one, "Farewell Ballad", a song that has been around for 15 years. In addition, tracks like "End of Days", "Ruins", and "Gather All My Sins" could have easily been trimmed (or removed) as well, limiting the album's runtime to a more sensible duration.
On the other hand, Black Label Society's latest offering is pretty good, if you're looking for some groovy metal with a strong Black Sabbath vibe. In fact, if you enjoyed
Grimmest Hits, chances are that you'll find a few merits here as well. What's more, the promotion of Dario Lorina to co-lead guitarist has resulted in some nice harmonies and solo tradeoffs like on "You Made Me Want to Live" or the solid "Forsaken". "Set You Free" featuring a beefy riff, "Destroy & Conquer" with its "Hole in the Sky" vibe, and "Gospel of Lies", a genuinely great song, are the album highlights, but even those have some extra fat.
So all in all, even though
Doom Crew Inc. sounds like Black Label Society on auto-pilot, it's still enjoyable but I seriously doubt that it warrants repeated listens. Lastly, I can't help but wonder where does this band goes from here and how much has Zakk left in the tank.
