Bulletboys are another band from the late 1980s who just refuse to lay down and die. Twenty years after his brush with fame at the peak of the LA rock scene, frontman Marq Torien and his trusty troops are back for another bite of the cherry.
From Out of the Skies was recorded at the Foo Fighters’ own studio and takes inspiration directly from that band – from using some of Dave Grohl’s and Taylor Hawkins’ gear to adopting their modern rock sound on the title track. This is hardly surprising as Bulletboys have always been something of a mirror of their contemporaries without really standing apart from them. They’re a good band with good songs, there’s just nothing special about them with no identity of their own.
The album gets off to a good start with the heavy riffing ‘Apocalypto’ a strong statement of intent, rocking straight on into ‘D-Evil’ with Jesse Hughes from Eagles of Death Metal adding his considerable gravitas to the proceedings. Next up is the already-mentioned blatant Fooeys worship followed by a standard radio power ballad directly out of the Mr. Big playbook – you can almost hear someone singing ‘Just to be with you’ behind the melody somewhere; further along is the heavy, churning ‘What Cha Don’t’ the pushes Bulletboys toward true metal territory.
There’s nothing bad here – fans of the band and hard rock aficionados, in general, will find plenty to like and the diversity keeps it interesting until well into the second half but overall the band let themselves down with a complete lack of identity. Never exactly the most prominent members of the old LA set in the first place, they don’t really make a play for recognition now and From Out of the Skies kind of just fizzles out by winding down into a series of mellow tracks at the end.
From Out of the Skies is a reasonably good album with some decent hard and heavy tunes, although there isn’t enough of them to keep an audience coming back to it more than a few times. As for the Bulletboys themselves, they once again prove to be excellent impersonators. What this band really needs is to finally find itself.
