Black Label Society - Mafia (2005)^{Release ID: 6654}

Zakk Wylde's drawling vocal style makes my shit itch.  It sounds forced and fake a lot of the time and is one of the main blockers to me exploring more of BLS' music.  For some reason though, on Mafia Wylde finds the correct blend of vocal nonsense and (albeit limited) levels of decent songwriting just enough to hold my interest.  What develops over far too many tracks is a passable attempt at some energetic heavy metal that only really falls short due to a complete lack of filter on the quality control department.

I don't profess to know much about Wylde's career beyond Ozzy Osbourne, friends with Dimebag and he likes baseball a lot.  His guitar playing style on what snippets I had regularly heard seemed to move between shredding and grooving with a lot of chunky riffs thrown in for good measure.  I don't mind his six string exploits, in fact I would go as far as to say that on Mafia they hold my interest more than anything else on display here.  I can actually remember bits of his work on the lead guitar and still have a discernable chug from the rhythm parts of his repetoire also having listened to the record a couple of times.

The first thing that starts to kill it for me is the production job (granted I am listening on stream so the rip quality might be the problem) but things seem clumsily mixed, almost to the point of distraction.  There sounds almost like there is a flimsy membrane between some of the instruments and in the jostling to get heard only Zakk's guitar stands out.  If I am honest Nunenmacher feels largely lost throughout the record and it feels like the songs are all incomplete in some regard, even in the more high-intensity moments.

Next I have issue with the tracklisting.  This album doesn't need fifteen songs (and most definitely not a Lynyrd Skynyrd cover), in fact it needs around ten as a maximum as by the time I get past Too Tough To Die I need a fucking break.  Just stopping for a minute to execute good ideas better, at the expense of a few filler tracks would have made this album a much more enjoyable experience.

Finally, there's no getting away from those vocals in the long run.  On the opening track Wylde actually just makes noises in time with the music for sections of the track which is just nonsense.  JUST PLAY MORE INSTRUMENTS INSTEAD IF YOU'RE THAT SHORT ON THE LYRICS FRONT.  Other than the poor production, the inconsistent songwriting, the overburdening arrangement and the vocals of a blues singer trapped in a washing machine on a spin cycle there's not much wrong with this.