Album review: CROSSBONE SKULLY – Evil World Machine

Better Noise Music [Release date 22.11.24]

Crossbone Skully is the band formed by Alice Cooper and Hollywood Vampires guitarist Tommy Henriksen. He’s joined by guitarists Anna Cara and Sam Koltun, bassist Chris Wyse and drummer Alex Boch. That’s not all though, as not only do Johnny Depp, Nikki Sixx, Def Leppard’s Phil Collen and Alice Cooper all feature on the album, Mutt Lange came out of retirement as executive producer. Pretty stellar cast list then…oh, and it is a concept album devised by Tommy Henriksen, Tommy Denander and Mutt Lange.

The album’s story focuses on Crossbone Skully who is an avenging superhero from outer space, returning to earth to save the world and reconnect with his lost deity love Piper and Kyd, the son he never knew he had. You can tell the influence of working with Alice Cooper has rubbed off on Tommy Henriksen!

The music is very AC/DC meets Airbourne as Tommy Henriksen sounds very similar to Bon Scott and the guitar riffs are pure AC/DC with a side order of Airbourne and Buckcherry. Of the singles released prior to the album ‘Boom Goes The Boom Boom’ (with Phil Collen guesting) sounds so much like an AC/DC song and it is a real foot stomping, head shaker, as is ‘Everyone’s On Dope’.

The shorter songs work best as the title track seems a little overblown (maybe the spoken word part grows thin on repeated plays?), and ‘Sin Eater’ is a tad too long. You can tell the Mutt Lange influence in the backing vocals on this one. However, ‘High On You’ is a real crowd pleasing slab of hard rock, aided by another guest spot, this time from Nikki Sixx.

For variety there is even a bit of punk folk a la Dropkick Murphys on ‘Let’s Bust The Trust’.

Crossbone Skully have produced an album with some cracking 80’s flavoured hard rock anthems and here’s hoping they have another album or more in them. ***1/2

Review by Jason Ritchie

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