Sunbomb – Light Up the Sky

The commercial heyday for Sinner and L.A. Guns may have been in the 80’s, but their respective members, Michael Sweet and Tracii Guns, have been rather prolific with several projects during a course of the past decade or so. Their own collaboration debut Evil and Divine came out three years ago, and it was a rather strong album packed with fired up riffs and good melodies.
The follow-up Light Up the Sky picks up where the debut left off, meaning that this is another classic Heavy Metal record, with just enough Hard Rock in there to make it relatable to the kind of music both men are mostly associated to.

Sonically the new album has far more raw quality to it than the full-bodied well-rounded bombastic sound of Evil and Divine. And that’s actually one of this album’s weaknesses. Not that there is anything wrong, with going in the more of a raw direction, but the sound on the debut just fitted the band’s music perfectly. And most importantly the production on Light Up The Sky lacks the balance and impact and as such it’s not particularly well-produced album.

The result is an album that lacks that impact and while Guns still spits out plenty of massive riffs as well as tasteful guitar solos, the result is just not as sturdy.

Musically the band is on familiar grounds, delivering a slightly modernized version of Heavy Metal inspired by classic acts. Inspirations were similar on the debut, but this time around, especially Guns, often comes too close to the sources. Main riff in the title track is basically Ozzy Osbourne’s “Diary Of A Madman”, “In Grace We’ll Find Our Name” is as Black Sabbath as it gets, “Steel Hearts” goes Pantera on you and guitar solo on “Winds Of Fate” has David Gilmour written all over it.

Sweet’s vocals are perhaps not the best match for this project, but due to more of the raw classic sound of the production, they actually work better on this album than they did on the debut. Still, such potent music would be served better with a vocalist of different type.

There is plenty good here, but there is also a lot of stuff that seems to serve as space filler. The two are not as inspired as they were on the debut, and the weak production doesn’t help either.

One of Sweet’s other projects, Sweet & Lynch, hit the rough spot on their second album, after that very strong debut. They managed to come back strong on their third album Heart & Sacrifice and let’s hope the same will be the case with Sunbomb’s follow-up to Light Up The Sky.

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