Poison'd!

by

Poison

Edit

The idea of a Poison cover album at first seemed super-lame. Maybe I wasn't psyched for this album because of last year's abysmal "Yeah" (2006) from Def Leppard, or it might have been because Poison plays the same set-list every tour (with no songs dating past 1990) and are content being a nostalgia act. Why not just release a new album of all new material? The idea of a cover album seemed like a cash-crab from a creatively bankrupt band. For whatever reason, my expectations for this CD were low.

To my surprise, however, I really love this CD. You can't argue with most of their choices--Tom Petty, the Stones, Alice Cooper, Bowie, etc. If you're thinking that it's sacrilegious for Poison to cover those artists--you needn't worry, as Poison really pulls it off. While you may still prefer the originals, Poison actually does a good job of making these songs their own, hence the name of the album "Poison'd" (2007). Even the really stupid "Little Willy" by Sweet sounds good.

One thing that "Poison'd" has going for it is the band sounds really, really good; perhaps as good as they have ever sounded. While Poison will never be the most technically proficient band on the planet, they sound really tight and on fire on this CD and totally into what they are doing. In other words, they still know how to rock and aren't just interested in going through the motions to get a product out.

I do have one bone to pick with "Poison'd" however, which is its inclusion of five past cover songs (over a third of the album). For one thing, some of them sound out-of-place, as the new songs sound fresh and the old covers "Rock N' Roll All Night," "Your Mamma Don't Dance" and "You Don't Mess Around with Jim" sound stale by comparison, as they are twenty years old. All five of these past covers are available on past albums and probably most people buying this CD already have them. How hard would it have been to just record five new covers? It was really stupid and lazy to put those old songs here.

Despite losing a few points for the inclusion of past cover songs, "Poison'd" is still a winner as the band sounds great and really makes these songs their own. Producer Don Was is a perfect fit for the band and will hopefully be around to produce a new Poison studio album.