Another day, another album featuring the honeyed tonsils of Ripper Owens… I mean, I know a man has to make a crust, but I’m starting to lose track of just how many ‘bands’ ol  Timmy Boy is in at the minute! This month we welcome his latest project, A New Revenge

Of course, it’s the bands he used to be in that make him of interest primarily to us here at Sentinel Daily, but the most surprising thing to note about A New Revenge is that – rather pleasingly I have to say – the band really sounds nothing like anything Ripper Owens has been involved with up til now.

That’s right. Enemies & Lovers sound not one iota like Judas Priest, Yngwie Malmsteen or Iced Earth, and even less, thank the lord, like the Three Tremors. Rather, Mr Owens is lending his voice to a set choc full of singalong melodies and refrains, all from the punkametalaltrock songbook of Keri Kelli, who plays a man of the match guitar performance as well as providing Ripper with a nicely different set of songs to sing. Broadly, A New Revenge have a sort of fin de siecle hard rock sound, running the gamut from Life of Agony to Enuff Z’Nuff circa the turn of the century, and very nice it is too.

Nicest of all is getting to hear Owens actually sing, rather than being forced to scream for his supper, with songs like the quite superb The Eyes really standing out; however The Distance Between and Glorious, whilst not so gloriously melodic both have their moments, and if you are open minded enough to accept Owens in non-Halford clone mode then you’re going to have a whale of a time with this album. And we’ve not even mentioned the Alice Cooper pastiche that is Only The Pretty Ones

Bass God Rudy Sarzo is along for the ride too, as is drum madman James Kottak, but this album is really about two men, Owens and Kelli. Strange bedfellows for sure, but somehow they’ve made this thing work and I’d love to hear A New Revenge’s second and third albums very soon to see where this partnership heads.

Enemies & Lovers is released by Golden Robot Records on March 29th.