Review Summary: Good, solid hard rock that doesn't forget about melody.
So Montreal’s Psychocide has called their debut album Alcohol & Bad Decisions. Ok, so we’re speaking alcohol in all its variations. It comes in all shapes, colors and tastes, from cheap booze to high-quality spirits. And then we have cocktails. Many would think it is easy to make a good cocktail, easy to drink, but one that suddenly gives you that pleasantly dizzying feeling.
Well, actually it is not just combining parts and certain dosages. You have to know what goes with what, whether you have to shake it stir it… It is an art in itself. Psychocide themselves and the music they came up with on this their first album initiated such comparisons and it has not only to do with the title. Their music is just like a cocktail made up of various high flying, or should we say hard rock parts (think Guns and Roses, Motley Crue, even Kiss and similar), with some orange juice, or flavoursome additives still on the riff side of things (think Cheap Trick, or Depeche Mode without the electronics). And the effects are quite drinkable, um, listenable, should I say.
The first thing that is evident is that the guys in Psychocide have quite an extensive record collection covering the Seventies to Nineties decades. Not only is their record collection extensive but they have listened to it in quite a detail and have applied it to the ten songs here. Now everything here, from the opener “Crazy Janet” to closer “Breaking Bad” (the title should give you an indication of the themes covered) is, as late great Robin Williams said in one of his masterpiece performances in “Moscow On The Hudson”, ‘form somewhere else’. But is that necessarily a bad thing?
Not really. You can pick and choose riffs and melodies on Alcohol & Bad Decisions where they come from and who played them first, but Psychocide have actually done them justice - you can listen to this album like drinking a good cocktail, and you might know that it’s got vodka and whatnot in it, but realize it goes down well, particularly in a crowded bar on a Friday night.
Maybe Psychocide has had good dosages of alcohol while they were making this album, but they certainly haven’t made any bad decisions while doing it. They have even put the best three tracks here (“Crossing Guard”, “Mr. Suit” and “Dear Alice”) somewhere in the middle of the album. New ideas? Maybe next time, they do seem quite capable.
