RAW

Absolutely awful. It's quite clear what Crack The Sky's intent is on 'Raw' from reading this message on the back cover: "No synthesizers, no digital processing, no keyboards". Curious. I was hopeful this would set up a challenge for John Palumbo and that he'd produce an entirely different yet entirely worthy Crack The Sky album. It's certainly different enough from the rest of their catalog, but whatever you call this kind of music, it's unlistenable.

We should never judge an album by the label it's on, but the fact that this is on Grudge Records is an indicator that something is very wrong. Grudge released tons of bottom- of-the-barrel albums by mostly hard rock and heavy metal bands in the '80s, and Crack The Sky's more direct approach on 'Raw' has them fitting right in with the rest of the crud. Whether you judge this on C.T.S.'s past efforts, or as an album in its own right, it's hard to make it through even the first few songs without feeling let down. The drum sound is cold, artificial, and I suspect not entirely natural (ie. it sounds like a machine). Jamie LaRitz's guitar work borders on lead-cheese wankery, not helped by his thin and tinny tone, like any '80s pop radio rock stuff you can recall. (I say this as someone who absolutely loves great metal lead guitar work.) Writing-wise, it's clear enough that Palumbo is behind this, but song after song the Crack The Sky legacy is tarnished with poor production and an approach that sounds hurried and insincere. This amalgam of new wave, heavy metal, prog, pop and prog worked on other Crack The Sky albums, but here it comes out of the meat grinder as an extremely ugly aberration that I never, ever want to hear again. (I listened to it twice. One time too many.)

This was a difficult one to rate. While not quite as bad as the preceding few Crack The Sky albums, this one does have a lot of problems.

First and foremost is John Palumbo handling mearly all of the work here. One of the best things about classic CTS albums is the interplay between the band members. This often resulted in the performance of a song being raised to heights far beyond the relative simplicity of the songwriting. With Palumbo playing everything but lead guitar, this interplay is all but non- existant.

The second is the muddy mix. There is so much reverb on the vocals, and so much tinniness in the rest of the instruments, it becomes difficult to listen to the entire album

On the plus side, Palumbo's lyrics are not bad. His humor is one of the better parts of this set. And the arrangements are attempting to capture some of the fun of the first three albums, with many of the fills and tempo changes that peppered the classic songs. But sometimes it comes across as forced.

The only truly original and somewhat progressive song here is the closing track, "The Samaritan", with varied time signatures making this an okay listen.

2.5 stars, rounded down for unoriginality.

Raw, much like the rest of the 80's CTS albums - Photoflamingo, World In Motion I, and From The Greenhouse, is frequently marred by substandard songwriting, dated, overly artificial 80's production cliches in addition to often indifferent John Palumbo vocal performances. Where Raw differs even from those flawed albums is that there is not a single redeeming song present here. World In Motion I had the ferocious rocker "Breakdown", the ever-so-slightly underrated Photoflamingo had a few gems like "Only Lonely" and the eerie "The Other Guy," and From the Greenhouse held a serviceable refraction of post-Roger Waters Pink Floyd. Raw instead offers unintentional hilarity, like "Elvis is My Daddy" - the most ham-fisted attempt at social satire to be excreted from Palumbo's lackadaisical pen. Or the simpering "Song For Another Year", which is conceptually from the same place as Billy Joel's "Piano Man" or CTS's own, far superior "We Want Mine" - but will definitely not make you forget either. An album so bland it isn't even adored by their cadre of Baltimorons, this is very generic-sounding mid 80s hard rock trying to be lyrically clever and failing miserably. It's hard to even recommend this album to CTS completists who have made it through World In Motion I. Both time and Palumbo himself have publicly forsaken this album, and so should you.