I am nearly eight years older than my brother.
Now, I am not cool, I can’t lie that I ever was either, but it did mean I got to educate him as to what I considered to be good music.
By the mid-80s, as a ten-year-old boy, I was pretty much obsessed with Bon Jovi and all the bands that were around at the time. Poison, Cinderella, Warrant and myriad more.
Family holidays were a chore, because the only album our dad ever showed any interest in was Queen’s Greatest Hits Vol 1. This is genuinely true and genuinely the reason I hate Queen to this day.
In the summer of 1991, though, my brother was eight and I was 15. And we’d had enough. So that year when mum and dad took us to Scotland (it was always Scotland…..) I made a mix tape of all my brother’s (ok, my…..) favourite songs.
Warrant had released “Cherry Pie” the year before and because I thought mum would have been offended at the line “I mixed up the batter and she licked the beater” I put one of its other tracks on instead (it was only after this that I found our late mother was so totally naive that she’d never have understood the meaning here). But “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” went down a treat, and it was played again and again.
28 years on, its good to see that, well, as Tommy Kiefer might have said, “the more things change, the more they stay the same” because its right here on this four track EP.
As the title of the EP suggests this is Animal Drive – Croatia’s finest hard rockers – getting under the influence, and ok, if we’re honest, there’s a whiff of a stopgap here, then a) its done lovingly, and b) its tremendous fun.
The cover of “….Cabin” is typical of the vibe. In short it sounds like Avenged Sevenfold are covering Warrant. It’s huge, its metal tinged and it works.
Dino Jelusic is the bands trump card. His vocals are good enough to see him as a member of the Trans-Siberian Orchestra and he roars his way through here.
Best of the lot, actually, is Roxette’s “The Look” (and lets not lie to each other, you’d still lose your shit if you heard the original on the radio. Here, though, it is turned into something Guns N Roses might do and Rosa Laricchiuta (also of TSO) is in fine form here.
Whitesnake’s “Judgement Day” is given the full treatment and sounds epic – even more overblown that Dame David and that takes some doing – and if my reaction to seeing there was a version of Skid Row’s “Monkey Business” here was initially one of “don’t mess with perfection…..” then fair do’s to them, they’ve given this a real meaty modern makeover too.
It’s like this. “Back To The Roots” is throwaway, but good grief its fun. More than that though, it serves notice that if you didn’t know Animal Drive before (hands up here…..) then you’d best get on board for the new album, because the skill here is undeniable.
Rating 8/10
