Serpents Kiss

While Al Atkins's solo work is as "stuck in the past" as a heavily used 70's porno mag, the Atkins - May Project can be considered its counterpart of sorts. With compositions dominated by contemporary philosophy, tempos are quicker, riffs are downtuned, track titles are now deliberately misspelled, and as a result, Serpent's Kiss sounds vulgar. And that's kind of a problem. You see, good ol' Al is the type of vocalist who's good at what he does, and bad at what he doesn't do.

Atkins' rusty set of baritone pipes comes with a natural predilection toward slower, bluesier, introspective stuff, hence why his solo career showcases nothing but that. Now that he's spearheading much faster, ruthless metallicism along the same lines as U.D.O. and modern Saxon, the limitations of his lower registers start to become apparent. This is most obvious in the vicious brawler 'Fight'. Hot-blooded riffs and a sequence of scintillating solos feel very incompatible with Atkins's moseying melodic yowl. The lightning fast opener 'The Shallowing' would be another example of this, if not for its very prudent decision to slow down to half-time for Atkins's verses.

Despite being such a modern-minded album, Serpent's Kiss still leaves room for some old-timey dynamism and experimentation. Song structure is prone to change, and most of the load-bearing riffs feel bluesy and emotive; 'Cold Gin' in particular sounds like it's straight out of Motörhead's Another Perfect Day. The best example of this album's remarkable chameleonic nature is without question the closing track 'Theatre of Fools'. The eight-minute monster makes full use of its time, almost mesmerizing in its incremental repetition.

In ways, Atkins and Paul May are very convincing with this newfound direction, and in other ways, we have 'Betta Than Twisted'. One of the more blatant cop-outs on the album, this is a track defined by a solitary "modern blues" riff that sounds like it was improvised on the spot. As the slothful composition aimlessly chugs along in one linear direction, Atkins mutters the song title like he's speaking a foreign language. Its mechanical procession simply doesn't work as fluidly as his earlier material like 'Heavy Thoughts' and 'Coming Thick and Fast'.

So as not to miss the forest for the trees, the Atkins - May Project is, in all likelihood, designed to give more agency to guitarist Paul May. It's less about Al Atkins's prior accomplishments and more about May's modernistic fret-work, repressing all the Rocka Rolla recidivism and rolling out the red carpet for red-hot rockers. While this approach has its own merit, Victim of Changes and Demon Deceiver feel far more genuine, while Serpent's Kiss feels like it's trying to be something it's not.

This review was written for The 1st Diamhea Memorial Review Challenge, dedicated to the memory of Christopher Santaniello.