CD: “Kingsnake” by Russ Diapper

Kingsnake is the latest solo offering from Russ Diapper, and he appears to show no signs of taking it easy! This is his second solo album, following on from his successful “No Cure for Curiosity”. This album is just as “bluesy” than “No Cure For Curiosity”, but sticks to Russ’s hard rock principles, easily showing his influences, and for this listener (at the moment) the strongest seems to be hints of the album “Your Filty Little Mouth”.

With it’s strong rhythms, and electric guitar, the album opens with “Trust Me”, and sets an attitude for the rest of the album, almost slowing up immediately for “Seven Days”, yet keeping the edge on that attitude. Only really slowing up for “Wolf Moon”, which might just be the first Rock/Blues track I have heard about a werewolf…but that could just be me…There is also a softer side in the shape of “Look The Other Way” which has some good guitar work, and strong bass line as things are taken down a notch for this love song. But don’t get too comfortable as “Bird In The Sky” follows, and this is not a slow paced love song, more a hard hitting heavy rock track.

There are differences between this and the previous album, and if drawing a direct comparison this has a more mature feel, not just lyrically, but also in sound, although, this might be at the sacrifice of some of the humour found within “No Cure”.

Towards the end of the album, it returns to a more hard rock sound, closing on “Doomsday”. This has a slightly different feel to the other tracks, with Russ asking the listener “So you think you know about Heaven and Hell? I got a story I so got to tell”. You can’t help but believe that he has. As the last track on the album, the almost cliched lyric of “The end is almost here” is sung out. Maybe the humour is just simmering under the surface.

Producing a good strong second album is not always an easy thing to achieve, however, Russ has achieved it. With ease. Let’s hope that the next album will continue show his growing talent.

With a Summer tour planned, and having missed the last tour, we look forward to seeing Russ perform live.

Track Listing
Trust Me
Seven Days
Look The Other Way
Bird In The Sky
Rock and Blues
Son Of A Gun
Wolf Moon
Shotgun
Roxy’s Dad
Motel No-Tell
Doomsday