A well known adverb is never judge a book by it’s cover. Well if I look at the cover of the Crank County Daredevils latest album Livin' In The Red I see four guys laidback in some sort of bar with a lot of booze and coke on the table. Something is telling me I don’t have to expect highly evolved metal with ditto lyrics. Crank County Daredevils resides from Asheville, North Carolina and have just released their second album Livin’ In The Red.

 

Livin’ In The Red starts with ‘I Want It All’, where you immediately can taste the Guns N’ Roses and W.A.S.P flavour that’s dripping from the entire album. So it’s not just the image that they use from a band like Guns N’ Roses but also the same musical style. This immediately leads me to the question if a band like this can meet with the standards of Guns N’ Roses or is Livin’ In The Red just an album to score some pussy?

 

At the start of the album it’s pretty much nothing more than a bad copy of the bands that are mentioned before and it takes until the third song before the Crank County Daredevils gets some sort of face of its own. Luckily enough this doesn’t end at the end of this song. With the following songs, ‘Rock N Roll Homicide’ and ‘That’s How We Roll’ they even manage to get close to some of the lesser songs of Guns N’ Roses. I say close because I have the feeling that the real passion is missing. It’s a bit like the difference between playing angry and being angry. I just miss that extra click that convince me of the heaviness and dirtiness of both the band and the album.

 

As for the rest of the album it’s pretty much the same of the stuff I’ve already heard. Which brings me to the conclusion that Crank County Daredevils are probably in it for the fun or to score some pussy. Most of the time I have the idea that I heard this song or riff several times before and most of the times that particular song or riff was also better than the songs or riffs on this album. It is probably the fact that this album reminds me of good old times that I manage to give the album a bit more that 50 points. One little advice if you do buy this album, please skip the last bonus track because it’s really hideous.