21 Guns
Salute

About this debut album by the 21 Guns ("Salute" from 1992) I've always had the same impression: I come out of it confused and defeated. Confused because every time I end up saying: "this song is a masterpiece, or maybe not, it's lousy" or "this one is terrible! No, I was wrong, listen to how amazing it is!" and defeated because, at the end of the album, there's not one song (I mean one) that stands out above the others!

A brief historical digression: the 21 Guns were a project put together by Scott Gorham of Thin Lizzy (and here there's nothing of that raw hard rock like a rare steak) who, in an attempt to recover lost time (and maybe money?), enlisted three then-unknowns, who are still unknown, namely Tommy La Verdi on vocals, Mike Stugis on drums, and Leif Johansen on bass and produced a melodic hard rock album.

Let's be clear: the production is phenomenal, the arrangements and songwriting excellent, so why isn't it a masterpiece? "Knee Deep" treads between Ratt and Dokken territories and is a great song, "These Eyes" is a ballad with nice choruses, but already with "Walking" something starts to crumble. It's an ordinary and bland song, what happened to the great start of the album? "Marching In Time" and "The Rain" present déjà vu akin to "Walking"... Thank goodness "Little Sister" and "Pays Off Big", surely two of the more successful episodes, take us into rocking territories but "Just A Wish" brings back the specter of anonymity. In the end, I feel inclined to save the umpteenth robust rock song "Battered And Bruised" and the melodic "Jungleland".

In the more robust songs, I believe 21 Guns have delivered an excellent performance, while in the more melodic ones and the ballads they have decidedly faltered.

It's not easy to give a final judgment: as I came out defeated, so did 21 Guns, who produced an album decidedly below the standards of the era (see, for example, Unruly Child, House Of Lords, and Giant) certainly not to be thrown away, but neither to be considered a masterpiece. The band then produced two more albums that certainly did not reach the levels (albeit modest) of this debut.