QUIET RIOT – Road Rage

Road Rage is the thirteenth studio record from Los Angeles, CA based Hard Rock/Heavy Metal band Quiet Riot. Quiet Riot achieved its peak of fame in 1982 when their debut album, Metal Health, became the first American Heavy Metal debut album to reach #1 on the Billboard charts. Quiet Riot is also famous for one of its founding members, Guitarist Randy Rhoads, who joined Ozzy Osbourne’s first solo band and after 2 legendary albums, was tragically killed in an airplane accident, and the Quiet Riot song “Thunderbird” from Metal Health is a tribute to him.

2017 finds the band in a state of rebuilding. With the passing of original vocalist Kevin Dubrow in 2007, no original members remain. Drummer Frankie Banali, a member since the 1982 breakout success, keeps the flag flying for Quiet Riot, and current Bassist Chuck Wright and Guitarist Alex Grossi have been in & out of the band, along with others, since 2004. Banali, Wright, and Grossi have been solid since 2010.

Vocally, the band has had a number of people in the role. Road Rage was completed with singer Sean Nichols, and when the band suddenly parted ways with Nichols, was hastily redone with new singer, American Idol alum James Durbin. If you’re hoping to hear classic Quiet Riot from this new record, it’s not there. The decision to go forward as Quiet Riot is an understandable one, but it is not the same band. The record itself, done on a self-proclaimed “shoestring budget”, and hoping to capture a “more raw sound” did exactly that. Road Rage would have benefited immensely from a more stout post production, and a little more time spent. Road Rage lands somewhere between “demo quality,” and “not bad for a local artist”. It is evident within one second that the final mix was done by a drummer, as the drums are much too forward in the mix throughout. There is very little space, and everything sounds jammed on top of each other. Durbin’s voice is clear, but almost completely dry, pitchy in places, and the hastily rewritten lyrics often don’t suit the tempo of the music. Quiet Riot puts on an excellent live show, and Road Rage simply does not do them justice. Nevertheless, still worth a listen.

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