Saigon Kick are a very puzzling band. This was their first album and was released in ’91 – right at the height of all things grunge. There are a couple of tracks that have that slight feel to them, but overall, musically, they scream hair metal – or whatever you want to call it. There are melodies and harmonies in every song, which is about as anti-grunge as you can get. The album after this one, The Lizard, would be the one to score big for the band, as the top twenty song, Love Is On The Way, was on that record. This album is a lot more quirky. Tracks like, What Do You Do, sort of defy description. It has a spoken lyric with a heavy guitar, but it reminds me of Devo.

The opening two tracks, New World, and Want You Say, are really good tunes. The first great track is Suzy. It’s funky bass line and guitar leap out of the speakers – and Extreme spring to mind here. I think one of the things that make them hard to pigeonhole is the vocals of Matt Kramer. He has a very unusual timbre to his voice. Colours is the first normal rock style track, and it’s really good with a nice solo from Jason Bieler. The very heavy riff of Love Of God changes the vibe somewhat (this could almost be an Alice In Chains track), and has that new wave feel to the track. I love the picked chord progression and the chorus on this track. Down By The Ocean is the weirdest track on the album – it’s lyrically strange and disturbing. The shortest track on the album is Acid Rain, which has a fat riff and nursery rhyme style lyric. My Life follows, and is trying to hard to be Queen in their weirder moments – it is my least favourite on the record. Month Of Sundays could be a Megadeth riff and is the heaviest track on the album. Ugly has the sleaziest of riffs and sounds like it could be a song from an LA hair band. Come Take Me Now shows how great songwriters Matt Kramer and Jason Bieler can be when they put the weird to one side. ICU has a typical hair metal riff and is a really good song.

So as you can tell, musically they are all over the place. They would hone their skills and zone in for the next album. I do really like weird, and things here are a bit different from the norm, so this gets…

An 8/10 from The Grooveman.