Beautiful Creatures Deuce 2005 Spitfire

The Beautiful Creature's are a band that have an excellent hairmetal pedigree featuring the talents of former Bang Tango vocalist Joe Leste and Anthony Focx from Alice Cooper's band. The Band have been unheard of since the release of the self titled debut in 2001, and with Leste focusing on his own solo projects and various problems with their label Warner Brothers, it seemed that no one was going to hear from the Beautiful Creature's again. However here they are 4 years later with a new album and it's.... ... well it's not as good as their debut and i appears that i am going against every other review about it when i say that i found it a little disappointing. Unlike 'Beautiful Creatures' it does not instantly grab your attention and it takes some listening to appreciate it. Don't get me wrong there are some great songs on it, it' well written and produced but it just lacks .... something that made their first album an instant like and the one CD that always gets played at parties. You have to pick the tracks carefully to listen to, unlike before when you knew that every song was fantastic. 'Unforgiven' and 'Save me' are perhaps the two best songs on the album and the two that tend to stand out from rest of the album as it's whole 41 minutes could play in the background with the only the occasional acknowledgement and wince at the vocals. Leste's voice tends to grate on me towards the end in a way it never did on the previous album or on any Bang Tango records. It is particularly bad on 'Ton of Lead' on which he sounds like he is really struggling to hit the notes. Maybe it's age catching up with him but the distortion on the vocals in 'Superfly' does not help matters any. Maybe my love of the previous album has made me overly critical of 'Deuce' and as a stand alone album it's good enough, but as the long awaited follow-up to 'Beautiful Creatures' it's just ok.  6/10 Kerri