Blackstar Rising - Barbed Wire Soul (1997)

It's always interested me that so many of the Carcass alumni spent their time during their mainstay's hiatus forming or joining bands that were oriented towards more traditional hard rock, heavy metal or even stoner rock in the case of Michael Amott's Spiritual Beggars. I think for the rest of the blokes, Swansong was the clear indicator of this direction, and album I wasn't terribly thrilled about, being so fanatic over the three albums before it. In hindsight, it had some fairly catchy material on there, but it felt like a real watering down of the deatht/thrashing they had perfected with Heartwork, and perhaps just too distant from their goregrind roots to even consider it the same band. For those on board with that album's sound, however, there was BlackStar Rising, the band they formed in the other's wake, which could now further that hard rocking style without the burden of a brand name associated with medical textbooks and meat repulsion.

Barbed Wire Soul is a little more seasoned than Swansong, a mix of hard rock tropes from the 70s and 80s but with slightly more aggressive riff-work and musicianship than you'd encounter from any band of hair-sprayed sellouts working the Sunset Strip. It's almost like someone metalized Aerosmith, and changed the vocals to sound a bit more road-worn and limited in range than Tyler. There's a bit of obnoxious and generic boogie behind some of the tracks, but never to the point it gets annoying, and on tracks like "Sound of Silence" or "Give Up the Ghost", it's apparent they were trying to be creative in a space that would be considered more traditional. In fact, the latter and several others do feel like they could have been Swansong outtakes, but now they weren't afraid to ramp up some of the bluesy qualities and the 'party' rock & roll mentality that they were probably denying themselves complete access to while still in Carcass. Obviously, these guys are overly competent for this style of rock, so it's too their credit that they take a step back and really fall in to relish their roles.

Having said all this, while Barbed Wire Soul is a decent record, it's sometimes cheesy and not all that memorable compared to anything they had written other than perhaps Swansong or the truly crude Reek of Putrefaction (unless you are a goregrind fanatic). It's certainly more accomplished and varied at exploring this hard rock style than Swansong, but do I like it more in the end? I can't say that for sure, only that it's nowhere near as good as a lot of the Spiritual Beggars material; but I was happy they got the chance to get this out of their systems, and later return to proper business with the successful Carcass reunion material, which is not the be-all, end-all some make it out to be, but light years more engaging for me than BlackStar Rising.

Verdict: Win [7/10]