In retrospect, it should have been obvious that the prefab supergroup
Rock Star Supernova -- originally just "Supernova" before an older band of the same name won its injunction against them, so their name became a compound of the name of their reality TV show and their chosen name -- would choose wannabe goth superstar
Lukas Rossi as their singer. Really, there was no other choice: as good as
Storm Large looked naked and as powerful as
Dilana was on-stage, there was no way that a group led by a disinterested
Tommy Lee would choose a female as a singer, and even if Toby Rand had the best original song, he was too much of a party-hearty frat boy to fit in with the rest of the crew (plus, he was Australian and
Lee had already gotten enough mileage out of his Crocodile Dundee impression, which started to look a little tacky around the time of Steve Irwin's death, anyway). So, it was down to
Rossi, since he was perhaps the most modern rocker in the lineup. But despite a song called "The Dead Parade" -- which just happens to arrive a few weeks after
My Chemical Romance's
The Black Parade -- there's no modern rock here.
Rock Star Supernova hardly sounds like the heavy work of the drummer from L.A. sleaze-rock legends
Mötley Crüe,
Izzy Stradlin's replacement in
Guns N' Roses, and the bassist for
Metallica. Although
Lee's drums thunder as
Gilby Clarke eases out bloozy riffs while
Jason Newsted pins the whole thing down, this doesn't sound at all like any of their previous music: it sounds like metal guys trying to sound like
Cheap Trick covering
T. Rex. Which means it sounds a bit like
Tiny Music-era
Stone Temple Pilots and a whole lot like
Enuff Z'Nuff.
Lee,
Newsted, and
Clarke all come from decidedly different backgrounds, whose only common ground is a fondness for '70s hard rock and metal -- music from an age when rock stars not only wanted to have fun, but were expected to have fun for the rest of us, a fantasy that all three lived out until grunge crushed their dreams. The band does sound good, albeit in a studio-pro sense: with their producer
Butch Walker, they've polished up their sound so much it never sounds heavy, but that doesn't detract from how
Clarke throws out some pretty good hooks, or how
Lee drums as powerfully as he ever has, or how
Newsted puts more energy into this than the situation needs. At times it clicks, or at least the riffs do. Meanwhile,
Rossi primps like he's a star already, affects a spooky growl, and often sounds overwhelmed by the backing vocals. In other words, it's pretty much exactly the album anybody who watched Rock Star Supernova was hoping for. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine