The second of Skid Row’s proposed series of three mini-LPs to be released over several months, and something of a ‘return to their roots’ according to the band, Rise of the Damnation Army certainly does its best to push memories of 2003’s Thickskin and 2006’s Revolutions Per Minute to the back of your mind.
If last year’s United World Rebellion: Chapter One was surprisingly palatable, Chapter Two finds the band truly going for it – this has riffs, balls and more than a tasty (left) hook or two, not least the opening one-two of We Are the Damned and Give It the Gun.
The one slight weak point is the soft-hearted Catch Your Fall, which seems somewhat out of place amid the erupting Molotov cocktails. But then we do get spiffing bonus covers of Sheer Heart Attack and Rats In The Cellar to finish, so it’s not all bad really.
