Description

Limited vinyl with gatefold cover Black Star Riders, the band that was formed out of Thin Lizzy – Scott Gorham, lead vocalist/guitarist Ricky Warwick, co-lead guitarist Damon Johnson, bassist Marco Mendoza and drummer Jimmy DeGrasso, released their second album The Killer Instinct on 23rd of February 2015. The Killer Instinct, is hard rock in the classic tradition. And as guitarist Scott Gorham says: We’re so confident about this album. It’s a step up in the evolution of the band. We’ve gone to the next level with this record, Ricky Warwick says. It’s the album that really defines Black Star Rideres. And Damon Johnson is equally emphatic. This is the band I’ve dreamed about being in all my life, he says. A lean, mean, dirty rock’n’roll band. And I really feel that this is a great album – a huge step in the progression of this band. The Killer Instinct represents a coming of age for Black Star Riders, as Warwick says: We know who we are. We want to move forward and find our own way, our own sound. It’s important to us to retain the spirit and the soul of Thin Lizzy. We’ll always have that because Scott’s in the band. But we’ve got a lot of shows under our belts as Black Star Riders, and that’s helped gel the band. Gorham puts it very simply: Black Star Riders is its own thing. You just have to power ahead and write what you write and not have to think about history. The Killer Instinct was recorded at Rock Falcon, the studio in Nashville, Tennessee in 21 days. The results speak for themselves. This album, Gorham says, has more depth. Damon Johnson concurs. We had more time, had a blast making it, and you can hear it. It’s not just the groove in the music – it’s the groove in the writing, in playing together as a band. Johnson and Warwick are the primary songwriters of the band and have been since day one. When it comes to writing, Ricky and I do the heavy lifting, he says. “But Scott is the foundation of this band. This thing doesn’t happen without Scott Gorham. Johnson cites the song Soldierstown as an example of the kind of monster riff that Gorham brings to this album. It’s very grand in its scope,” he says. It has the feel of some of those classic Thin Lizzy songs – Black Rose and Emerald. Soldierstown is also an example of the depth that Ricky Warwick brings in his lyrics. The subject of this song is terrorism – for the Northern Ireland-born singer, a subject of profound personal significance. Warwick says: The scenario in Soldierstown is one that has happened so many times in history, and it still happens now. Terrorists come to a house and say: Give up your strongest son, he has to go and fight. There’s that expression: you lose a finger to save a hand. There are other songs on the album that Warwick describes as storytelling – such as Charlie I Gotta Go, its title a reference to Charles Manson. But much of what he writes is drawn from his own life. I got a little more personal on this record, he says. And this is most powerfully illustrated in a song that is destined to become a classic: Finest Hour. It’s about my first girlfriend, he says. We were living in Glasgow, we were sixteen, into music, and we’d go to gigs at Barrowlands. That song is me reaching out to her and saying: they were good times, I hope you remember them, and I hope you’re okay. For Warwick, the beauty of Finest Hour is in its simplicity. There are only three chords in that song, he says. The best songs are like that. And the emotive quality in it is echoed in what Johnson describes as this album’s most leftfield track, Blindsided. It’s an epic song, Johnson says, with an epic Ricky Warwick lyric. And that beautiful guitar figure is Ricky’s. It gets me like Wish You Were Here by Pink Floyd or Tuesday’s Gone by Lynyrd Skynyrd. It’s one of those classic guitar statements. In fact, the album as a whole is a defining statement. Above all else, The Killer Instinct proves that Black Star Rideres is a classic rock band in its own right. Track listing: 1. The Killer Instinct 2. Bullet Blues 3. Finest Hour 4. Soldierstown 5. Charlie I Gotta Go 6. Blindsided 7. Through The Motions 8. Sex Guns And Gasoline 9. Turn In Your Arms 10. You Little Liar