FOZZY: Chasing the Grail

Produced by Rich Ward except *by Mike Martin

Released: January 20

Looking back, I reckon I was a bit hard on Fozzy's previous album, as it was much better than I gave it credit for. Even so, five years on and Chasing the Grail completely buries it in every way. This is without doubt the band's most complete and accomplished work to date, a grand combination of Chris Jericho and Rich Ward's vast influences and inspirations from the metal world into a coherent whole. It isn't perfect as "Broken Soul" and a couple of songs in the middle demonstrate, but trying to find a better example of powerful, aggressive pure metal in 2010 is going to take some doing.

Chasing the Grail shows how far Fozzy has become since their early days playing covers for a lark. It also confirms Jericho's abilities as a vocalist and songwriter, and Ward's devastating ability as a guitarist. The Duke's arsenal of catchy riffs is astounding and his lead guitar work is equally fearsome; there can be no question that he is one of the most under-rated players in metal. He's assisted here and there by Jeff Waters shredding the frets on a couple of tracks including the enormously grooving "Martyr No More", but this is not a guest-laden volume like All That Remains. This is Fozzy, pure and simple.

"Under Blackened Skies" is a huge opener that would overshadow every other song on an album by a lesser band, but Chasing the Grail is full of tracks just as good. "Let the Madness Begin" is a full-tilt rocker inspired by and sounding rather like Ozzy Osbourne around his Bark at the Moon period, "Pray for Blood" is complete savagery. Then again, "New Day's Dawn" is a misstep as it veers from poppy ballad (with Ward singing in a ridiculous falsetto) to a heavy grind and "God Pounds His Nails" is just OK. "Paraskavedekatriaphobia (Friday The 13th)" gets things back on track with some vicious cross-cutting riffs and "Revival" is also a keeper with a Gothic-sounding organ adding a second layer to the driving guitar attack.

As good as Chasing the Grail is up to this point, it is the final track that takes it to another level of awesome. "Wormwood" is Jericho's adaptation of the Book of Revelation, a 14-minute progressive power metal epic. Featuring a multitude of tempo changes, orchestration, a choir and some face-melting guitar from the song's composer and arranger, former member Mike Martin, this is the track that ultimately establishes Fozzy as a serious act, with no input from Rich Ward at all!

Chasing the Grail is a fabulous metal album, one of the best pure metal releases of this year for sure.

1. Under Blackened Skies
2. Martyr No More
3. Grail
4. Broken Soul
5. Let the Madness Begin
6. Pray for Blood
7. New Day's Dawn
8. God Pounds His Nails
9. Watch Me Shine
10. Paraskavedekatriaphobia (Friday the 13th)
11. Revival
12. Wormwood*

Rating: 89%

FOZZY: All That Remains

Produced by Andy Sneap

Released: 2005

Fozzy started out as a fun-time cover band project for Rich Ward and Chris Jericho but over the years the band has striven to develop a legitimacy as a serious act. Prior to this album, Fozzy was still covering old 80s metal standards, using silly pseudonyms and pretending they were a forgotten early American rock band trapped in Japan for 15 years after a record deal gone wrong. Having now dropped all of these pretences, after almost three years of silence Fozzy returned with its first complete album of original material.

All That Remains features a raft of guests that include Marty Friedman, Zakk Wylde, rapper Bonecrusher, Derek Bonner from Lilitu and two of the guys from Alter Bridge (the band formerly known as Creed) but, sadly, little of the mischievous sparkle of the previous albums. While the originals on Happenstance weren’t too bad, it was the spot-on versions of Scorps, Maiden, Priest, Sabbath and Accept classics that really made the album what it was. This time around, it’s all originals and something just seems to be missing.

That isn’t to say this is a bad album, because it isn’t, and is, in fact, rather a diverse little outing with a mixture of straight up heavy metal and hints of old-school American power metal and even a thrash element cropping up towards the end, where Friedman chimes in for a guest spot in “Born of Anger”. Jericho once again proves himself to be quite a noteworthy vocalist and Ward, as always, wrangles out some truly quality riffage, but All That Remains just somehow lacks the entertainment factor that a band called Fozzy with a wrestler as a singer should possess. “Enemy”, “The Way I Am” and “Lazarus” are actually pretty good songs, but the rest doesn’t hold that well together, especially the rap-metal tune, which is rather surprising when most of this band were in Stuck Mojo.

1. Nameless Faceless


2. Enemy


3. Wanderlust


4. All That Remains


5. The Test


6. It's a Lie


7. Daze of the Weak


8. The Way I Am


9. Lazarus


10. Born of Anger

Rating: 62%