Lizzy Borden Albums (8)
'Appointment with Death'
Release Date 10/2/2007
Tracks 11
Label Metal Blade
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What The Critics Say
Think '80s theatrical metal, and bands such as W.A.S.P. and Mötley Crüe immediately come to mind. But right up there alongside these names -- albeit lesser known -- was Lizzy Borden, a gentleman who modeled his character and stage show after the great Alice Cooper (an obvious clue being the similarities in their respective names, eh?). However, out of all the aforementioned bands, Borden was probably the most metallic (as evidenced by such releases as 1985's Love You to Pieces). After taking the '90s off (a good move -- the group's brand of metal was an anomaly in the wake of grunge, rap metal, etc.), Borden returned once more in the early 21st century, resulting in releases such as 2007's Appointment with Death. A concept album (which deals with the subject of...death), Appointment with Death is vintage Lizzy Borden -- melodic Iron Maiden-esque metal, vocals comparable to Bruce Dickinson and Rob Halford, and so on -- especially on such selections as the title track, "Bloody Tears," and "Tomorrow Never Comes." Add to it guest appearances by several renowned '80s metal names (Dokken's George Lynch, Y&T's Dave Meniketti), and even a modern-day metal titan (Trivium's Corey Beaulieu), and you have an album that stands up well against Lizzy Borden's vintage releases. ~ Greg Prato, All Music Guide
'Deal with the Devil'
Release Date 10/10/2000
Tracks 11
Label Metal Blade
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What The Critics Say
A lot may have changed in the years since the last Lizzy Borden album, Master of Disguise, but the band, bless their souls, have stuck to their heavy-metal-meets-glam-in-a-dark-alley aesthetic. That's consistency for you. Not to mention an enviable ability to stay blind to musical trends. After disappearing for nearly a decade, thanks to legal wrangles, and then regrouping with a new lineup, Lizzy still sound like the missing link between Skid Row and Iron Maiden. The songs are simplistic, the guitars are over the top, and the lyrics are standard-issue metal schlock. Which are minor misdemeanors considering that the album packs in more hooks than a fisherman's kit. With its crunchy anthems, stomping choruses and overall fondness for pedal-to-the-metal excess Deal With the Devil is as infectious as chicken pox. On two tracks, Lizzy aim to stretch their wings -- "Zanzibar" wears its Eastern influences on its sleeve; "We Only Come Out at Night" adds a dash of industrial rock to the mix. There are a couple of covers that make up in vigour what they lack in originality: a torqued up, take-no-prisoners run through Blue Oyster Cult's "(This Ain't) The Summer of Love" and a version of Alice Cooper's Generation Landslide" that manages to replicate much of the sneery edge of the original. And, yes, there's some great cover art by Todd MacFarlane as well. Loud, flashy, unpretentious, and with not a single ballad in sight, Deal With the Devil is good, cheap fun and proof that grunge never happened. ~ Leslie Mathew, All Music Guide
'Love You to Pieces'
Release Date 8/22/1995
Tracks 10
Label Metal Blade
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What The Critics Say
Although Enigma Records was better known for its connection to the mid-'80s Paisley Underground scene (Rain Parade, Game Theory, etc.), the Los Angeles-based indie was also among the first to document the rebirth of glam metal, which overtook the L.A. club scene at the same time, by issuing the first album by Mötley Crüe, Poison, and others. The glam-poppy Lizzy Borden was also ran in the hair metal sweepstakes, but its debut album, 1985's Love You to Pieces, holds up better than many other documents from the era. The packaging, complete with faux-goth band logo and the requisite hot big-haired chick in lingerie, is crushingly obvious, and the entire album flirts with cliché. Lizzy Borden himself -- who like Alice Cooper adopted the band's name as his own -- sounds uncannily like Iron Maiden's Bruce Dickinson most of the time, and songs like "Council for the Cauldron" and "Rod of Iron" sound like Spinal Tap jokes. Yet there's an appealing freshness to this album despite the clichés. Drummer Joey Scott Harges and bassist Mike Davis play with the whiplash pacing of a hardcore punk band, and there's a tongue-in-cheek quality to the album that puts it over during all but the most inane passages. By the end of the band's career, Lizzy Borden would be indistinguishable from the dozens of other poodle-haired glam-metal bands on the Sunset Strip, but Love You to Pieces isn't half bad. ~ Stewart Mason, All Music Guide
What The Critics Say
Lizzy Borden's second studio album, following the live The Murderess Metal Road Show by only a few months, is the band's career high point. A nice balance between the energetic but cliché-ridden pop-metal of its debut and the undistinguished Poison ripoffs of its later albums, Menace to Society drops the dopey Spinal Tap-like lyrics of the debut in favor of a less cartoony worldview, and singer Lizzy Borden's vocals are considerably more self-assured and less shrill. The tempos are slower, but they never slog down into the mush of so many other metal bands. The best tracks, like the Queensrÿche-like "Ursa Minor," show a greater sense of subtlety and dynamics than before, and Jim Faraci's spacious but not too glossy production shows the group off better. It's still not a great creative leap -- like many of the L.A. hair metal bands, Lizzy Borden was more about the look and the lifestyle than the music -- but Menace to Society is the one album where Lizzy Borden seems to be pushing itself to develop as a band. ~ Stewart Mason, All Music Guide
'The Murderess Metal Road Show'
Release Date 10/17/1990
Tracks 17
Label Enigma
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What The Critics Say
Many bands joke that their second album will be a live album that reprises their debut, to show how much better the songs sound after several months honing them on the road. Well, Lizzy Borden went and did it. 1986's The Murderess Metal Road Show is nothing more nor less than the entirety of 1985's Love You to Pieces with a different song order and a few extra tracks from the band's first EP. The problem is that the songs actually don't sound better live: the playing is sloppy and the songs tend to ramble on listlessly ("American Metal" goes on for six full minutes, then returns for an interminable encore in "Finale") without the tightness and punky precision that was the main attraction of Love You to Pieces. Even worse, the sound is simply awful, hollow, and echoey like it was recorded from the back of an empty arena during sound check. And if you can't see a band as theatrically glammy as Lizzy Borden, a lot of the appeal is lost. The Murderess Metal Road Show is a disappointment even for fans. ~ Stewart Mason, All Music Guide
'Master of Disguise'
Release Date 1/1/1989
Tracks 12
Label Metal Blade
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What The Critics Say
Curiously, just as it had happened with their chief inspiration, Alice Cooper, a decade earlier, by the time they released final album, Master of Disguise, in 1989, Lizzy Borden (the band) had been dismantled and overwhelmed by Lizzy Borden the persona and singer, with only drummer Joey Scott Harges surviving from the original lineup, and that's because he was Lizzy's brother! Musically, too, the subsequent next step was eerily analogous, since, much like Alice's triumphant solo debutant ball, Welcome to My Nightmare, Lizzy Borden's next dance, Master of Disguise, was a highly stylized concept album built on surprisingly solid compositional ground, and did much to eradicate thoughts of recent blunders (in Alice's case it had been the disastrous Muscle of Love; in Lizzy's, the contrived and derivative pop-metal missteps of Visual Lies). In fact, Master of Disguise was arguably the apex of Lizzy Borden's recording career -- band or man -- unless you favor the raw, simpler charms of early efforts Love You to Pieces and Menace to Society. Inspired by the classic Phantom of the Opera fable, the album came complete with soundtrack-like sonic effects, orchestral arrangements, and highly theatrical performances, which greatly enriched the actual songs within its core. These were themselves surprisingly eclectic, and ranged from sweeping pomp rock epics like the title suite and "Waiting in the Wings," to the tough heavy metal of "Love Is a Crime" and "Roll Over and Play Dead," plus a few, surprisingly moving ballads such as the piano enhanced "Never Too Young," and the beguilingly bleak "One False Move." Not unlike Savatage's similarly pretentious but entertaining Streets: A Rock Opera opus a couple of years later, Master of Disguise was the sort of rock opera that, on paper, shouldn't have worked, but somehow did -- although its ultimate commercial failure might suggest it did, in fact, fail. In any event, within the scope of Lizzy Borden's career, the record was a more than worthy, and pleasantly unexpected, last bow before the cruel curtains of public awareness closed forever on the would-be king of '80s shock rock. Alas, Marilyn Manson would fare far better in the next decade. ~ Eduardo Rivadavia, All Music Guide
What The Critics Say
Visual Lies was Lizzy Borden's third album, and the one where the L.A.-based glam metal band made the final leap into poodle-haired mediocrity. Their first studio album, Love You to Pieces, had its moments, and 1986's Menace to Society was an impressive blend of hard rock intensity and pop gloss. Unfortunately, on Visual Lies, the pop gloss starts to overwhelm the sound. Veteran pop-metal producer Max Norman (Ozzy Osbourne, etc.) takes over arranging and mixing chores in the manner of Mutt Lange's work with Def Leppard, whose Pyromania is the obvious sonic blueprint for the layers of backing vocals and the hard-candy crunch of the politely distorted guitars and walloping (sequenced-sounding) drums. The combination of Norman's slick production and frontman Lizzy Borden's appealingly whiny vocals would be a better one if the songwriting were sharper, but these songs are frustratingly light on memorable hooks, which only shows up the weakness and derivative quality of the lyrics and melodies. Instead of being Lizzy Borden's commercial breakthrough, Visual Lies is the beginning of the end. ~ Stewart Mason, All Music Guide
What The Critics Say
Following up the misguided Visual Lies album and recorded as the original lineup of Lizzy Borden was breaking up, Terror Rising is a four-song EP pairing two covers (Jefferson Airplane's "White Rabbit" and the Tubes' snot-rock classic "Don't Touch Me There") with two originals that sound like album leftovers. The version of "White Rabbit" is just as much of a bad idea as it sounds like it would be, an irritating reworking of a song for which the band seemingly had no particular affinity. On the other hand, the Tubes cover is a whole lot of fun, a duet with Bitch singer Betsy Weiss and one from which campy vocalists milk every ounce of goofy humor. The two originals on side two, "Catch Your Death" and the title track, are slight riff-rockers with little to recommend them. The belated 1990 CD release added the four tracks from Lizzy Borden's spotty 1984 self-released debut EP Give 'Em the Axe, for the sake of completists. ~ Stewart Mason, All Music Guide
