Y&T – Facemelter

The return of Y&T after thirteen years is unexpected, but delightful. Dave Meniketti who wrote unforgettable classic albums like Mean Streak, Earthshaker and In Rock We Trust offers no less than fourteen tracks on Facemelter. On board still is bass player Phil Kennemore, another original member of Yesterday And Tomorrow.

What’s good

The essence of what is good in the first place with Facemelter is that the style did not change an inch from the earlier releases. Y&T still stands for Hard Rock with melody, crunchy riffs and Dave’s signature voice, and surely nobody expected a course correction after more than 35 years. The fan of the band will be delighted to hear typical tunes like “On With The Show” and the catchy “How Long”, while those who never really cared for the famous releases of the band can stay away from this one, too. But Frontiers has brought all others several new tracks that will certainly find their way into the setlist of the coming tours, and those will fit in perfectly. With 14 songs, there is still enough experiments and variation on Facemelter that it is not one-dimensional at all.

What’s bad

Not every experiment can be successful, right? Blues like in “Gonna Go Blind” is still on the positive side, but a boring AC/DC style track like “Hot Shot” in unworthy of Meniketti. In addition, some of the songs come across as a little bland, like “Shine On”, “Wild Child” and “One Life”.

Overall, Facemelter is a very good album, not completely eye to eye with the old and legendary releases, but that was a different time in music history. On the other hand, if one would pick only nine or ten of the tracks on the album, which is the standard number on the older albums, there would not be much distance left to In Rock We Trust. Hopefully, the band has enjoyed their time in the studio again and keeps on giving us albums like Facemelter. In the meantime let’s go “On With The Show” again.