Band:	Phil Campbell And The Bastard Sons
Album:	Kings Of The Asylum
Style:	Hard rock
Release date:	September 2023

01. Walking In Circles
02. Too Much Is Never Enough
03. Hammer And Dance
04. Strike The Match
05. Schizophrenia
06. Kings Of The Asylum
07. The Hunt
08. Show No Mercy
09. No Guts! No Glory!
10. Ghosts
11. Maniac

They're Phil Campbell And The Bastard Sons and they play rock 'n' roll.

There's no way to talk about this album and this band without spending most of the review talking about Motörhead. Lemmy's death in 2015 left a giant hole in the worlds of rock and metal, and pretty much any husky vocals having speed metal band owes direct dues to them, and pretty much every metal band after 1980 owes indirect dues to them. That did open a large market for hard rock or speed metal or 'whatever High On Fire is' bands whose vocals would sound at least similar to them, but at least part of what fills the void is bands by members of Motörhead. Though the original trio (and Würzel too) have sadly passed away, two members of the last incarnation of Motörhead, one active in this formula since 1995, are still alive. Though drummer Mikkey Dee is currently rocking it out with the equally legendary Scorpions (and doing pretty good), but it's guitarist Phil Campbell that's of interest here.

Phil Campbell might've missed the classics like Overkill or Ace Of Spaces, but having been Motörhead's guitarist since 1983 and having made his debut with Orgasmatron and playing on every album since, it's safe to say he's played on some classics anyway. That's not even mentioning his part in the very overlooked NWOBHM Persian Risk prior to them. A solo album aside, what Phil has been most busy with was creating a hard rock band with what seem to be his actual sons (correct me if I'm wrong), and even though the only time I've seen them live they played a Motörhead (and a surprisingly career spanning one at that), it's safe to say that they're riding that wave of covering the aforementioned hole. But new singer Joel Peters doesn't really sound like Lemmy, so Kings Of The Asylum as a result doesn't sound that much like a Motörhead album.

And what I mean by that is that there are plenty of songs here where I don't instantly feel like Lemmy's vocals could replace Joel's to create a Motörhead song. Sure, there are songs like that, "Too Much Is Never Enough" is the biggest offender, and a bunch of them come pretty close, even though there are some songs like "The Hunt" where it sounds completely Motörhead-ish until the chorus. Point is, the "influence" is there and it's very very obvious, but the songwriting adapts more to Joel's vocals, which can gen coarse and husky but it's also more comfortable in different registers that sound more generally hard rock-ish, so as a result the sound is less specific towards the sound of that one band.

Does that dilute the band's sound? Maybe. Seeing their Motörhead tribute set it was interesting seeing a singer who doesn't sound like Lemmy tackle on the songs, not necessarily in a bad way. That is reflected here. It's less specific and I'm not quite sure if what results is a Phil Campbell And The Bastard Sons sound or just a hard rock sound, one that blends the long lineage of 70s and 80s dirty hard rock with somewhat of a more modern touch, most evident in the riffing at points in "No Guts! No Glory!", so a lot of it takes more cues from the parent band in just sounding unapologetic and energetic rather than merely continuing the sound. And as someone who has some issues with readjusting to this "dad metal" sound, there's something that really works here in the melodies and the energy even with all the familiarity that permeates it.

Kings Of The Asylum does a pretty good job of appealing to fans of Motörhead but also taking enough general hard rock tropes under their belt to broaden the sound from just sounding like that one band.