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Rating: A few days ago, I bought for very little money, at a stall of used trinkets, this CD of memorable ugliness, a true symbol of a certain supremely childish and useless way of making rock music and therefore worthy, indeed perfect for an explanatory review about it.
The inspiration for the purchase came from the memory of the guitarist in action on this work, the Italian-American Michael Angelo, whom I met many years ago at a music fair in central Italy, while he was performing at the Dean guitar stand, his sponsor. Michael was busy tinkering preferably on an unusual instrument, equipped with two necks opposing each other on which he moved his fingers simultaneously, using both hands and playing connected notes, without plucking the strings since he logically couldn’t use a third limb. Sometimes he attacked the two keyboards from above (as is done on the piano) instead of from below... all mostly at supersonic speed, accompanied by noisy pre-recorded heavy metal tracks.
A nice guy... with the good looks of a Neapolitan son or grandson of emigrants; a virtuoso, a clown, a precise and super-prepared performer (graduated in theory and composition in Chicago), a technique monster, a whim of nature, a machine.
And therefore incapable, as a machine, of arousing the slightest musical emotion, I mean those true and good ones, for which enthusiasts gladly spend time and money in their pursuit, quite different from the evanescent amazement at a circus phenomenon, at the extreme exploit that obviously involved me and everyone present on that occasion.
In the second half of the eighties and still in the early nineties, before the cleanup brought by the establishment of the grunge genre, a certain type of metal music developed and pushed itself to the extreme consequences, entirely counterproductive, which, instead of seeking conceptual inspiration and performative feeling, prioritized absurdities like the maximum number of notes per second in the solo of the moment, any fat and mean guitar riff, tragically heard and reheard, the lyrics placed just to showcase the free screams and the vocalist's range, devoid of the slightest communicative urgency, even the annoying appearance and clothing (a whole bloom of hairdos, bully looks, and macho poses: the infamous hair metal).
Those who can't stand harder rock find it easy to point to that period, supremely symbolized by albums like this, to ridicule this genre, even if things aren’t quite so, and even those years saw the release of brilliant heavy but inspired, engaging, and sometimes quite innovative records (one name above all: King's X).
Nitro is the glam/hair metal project of Angelo along with Jim Gillette, a blonde twit who sings obscenely squawking almost all the time, produces the record without a shred of personality amidst snare cannonades and metal mannerisms, appearing in the CD booklet in whorehouse photographs, with long blond hair cheaply styled like Greta Garbo and a smug piggish face. There’s no reason for these ten pieces of appalling anonymity, plus an eleventh which is Angelo’s final solo spin, a million notes shot in fifty-two seconds.
Everything is wrong in this album (second and last of the lineup, year 1991), there isn’t a melody worthy of the name, an effective and striking riff... grit and technique serve nothingness, the power spins in vain, creates no groove, doesn’t warm the chest and stomach. Nor is there any trace of contributions from the point of view of originality, or from that of interpretative passion, or the devoted and heartfelt revival of a noble-blooded past standard... nothing. Barely forty minutes of epidermic and crude noise, talent and playing ability obtusely plastered on stereotypes able to showcase them, but also to reject them in bulk and forget them, with boredom.
The symmetrical pettiness of the cover art and the tackiness of the title ("Hot, Wet, Dripping with Sweat") already say a lot: museum of horrors work.
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