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I gotta tell ya that you could find no bigger Zodiac Mindwarp fan than I back in the day. I saw 'em in concert twice, had every single and 12" and loved every bit of their cheesy but brilliant late-80s album Tattooed Beat Messiah. I even bought all of their crappy '90s techno-metal albums and saw them in concert last year when they played some select reunion concerts here in the States.

That being said, BOY DOES THIS RECORD SUCK!

Gone are the huge guitars and monster riffs of old. Gone is Zody's hilarious space-aged war-zone pimp rhetoric of yore. Gone are the Motorhead style blitzkrieg rockers like "High Priest of Love" and "Prime Mover." Nope, what we're left with here in 2002 is a bad AC/DC rip act off with a tired frontman and crappy backing band.

Guitarist Cobalt Stargazer's fiery riffs have been reduced to a mere spark, and Mark (Zodiac) Manning's singing has retained little of the venom and passion he was once (sort of) famous for. In their place are boring mid-tempo hard rock tunes no better or worse then any bar band could churn out on a Thursday night at the Shamrock (pick a town). The title track just meanders along like T.S.O.L. in their bad metal period and "Fucked By Rock" can't even live up to it's funny chorus title with any decent verses. Meanwhile, "King Of Love" is just plain stupid retard metal. Zody tries to pen some pop numbers in the form of "20,000 Women" and "Jane In Blue," but just doesn't have enough melody in his voice to pull it off.

Only the closing cut, "Shake," manages to conjure up any images of the Love Reaction of old, with it's sleazy Crue-style riff and grinding rhythm. When Zody growls "crack that whip" he finally sounds as dangerously sexy and devilishly charming as he used to.

* 1/2