Band:	White Wizzard
Album:	Flying Tigers
Style:	Heavy metal
Release date:	September 2011

01. Fight To The Death
02. West L.A. Nights
03. Starchild
04. Flying Tigers
05. Night Train To Tokyo
06. Night Stalker
07. Fall Of Atlantis
08. Blood On The Pyramids
09. Demons And Diamonds
10. Dark Alien Overture
11. War Of The Worlds
12. Starman's Son

Flying Tigers is one of those albums that makes that proverb "don't judge a [CD] by its cover" seem annoyingly wise. I cognitive dissonanced the fuck out, trying to find merit in it, but there just isn't much to be found. At its very best it's a kind of fun and catchy homage to the NWOBHM bigs. And that's peachy. But most of the time, it's really just mediocre rip-off work. Most of it is as dull as its cover art is off-the-charts magnificently rad.

It does start off really well, though. "Fight To The Death" does what solid NWOBHM-venerating stuff needs to do. It makes me want to stand on furniture with a cape on and a replica sword to whoosh around in hand--I'll want to throw 20-sided dice at shit and masturbate furiously to LOTR Nazgul hentai. But ultimately no amount of fantasizing of saving the Milf Empress of Kalzamar! and all that other tremendous stuff will mask the fact that most of the other songs on Flying Tigers are weak. The number of solid riffs and catchy hooks are overshadowed by the number of ones that bore the hell out of me.

The dudes in White Wizzard aren't bad at what they do though; the vocal performance, for example, does some really solid, hammer to the anvil justice to the NWOBHM big dogs. The dude kind of wobbles between impersonating Rob Halford and Bruce Dickinson, which sounds like it'd just be boring old mimicry, but he does it well. If either men were dead, White Wizzard's vocalist would most likely be wandering around Vegas right now doing full-blown impersonations of them, Elvis-style. And he'd probably be one of the more successful ones too. The solos are pretty epic, and the bassist has some chops (and the production brings him pretty far up accordingly). But, again, most of the riffs here?most of which are pretty up-beat?make me yawn. And without the substantial shit, all the sweetener will just end up giving you headaches.

On top of that, the impression Flying Tigers leaves with me is that White Wizzard is concerned more with selling their image than they are with giving us memorable tunes. And even if that isn't the impression you end up getting from this, it's still the sort of Priest and Maiden worship that will force you to ask "why am I not listening to Maiden or Priest instead?"

Gets a few not too shabbies and a lot of meh from me.

Stand out tracks: "Fight To The Death", "Flying Tigers", and "Demons And Diamonds"