'Thickskin' received mixed reviews from both the press and fans, whilst some absolutely love it, other's stated that the band had not only lost one of the greatest frontmen in rock, they had also lost some of the punch that made them so fantastic in the first place.

So what would happen with the next release from the Skid's....

Mediocre would sum this album up nicely. But since everyone has been waiting patiently for the second Skid Row album since the departure of Sebastian Bach, i'll go into a little more depth.

The 11 track CD kicks off with 'Disease', which is a promising enough start to proceedings, I have never had a problem with Johnny Solinger's vocals, to me they match up to Bach's well enough and they certainly hold this song together well enough. Excellent catchy riffs on this track too.

'Another Dick in the system' is a punky style track which isn't bad, and to be honest I thought that the entire album would have taken on more of that raw feel.

And following that promising start ends. We descend into a strange mixture of radio friendly little ditties such as 'Nothing' and 'Strength' (which are decent enough songs, but would not hold a candle to one single track of the almighty 'Slave to the Grind') and bizarre country style 'You Lie'.

So it's not the new vocalist that's the problem and its not the song writers (Bolan and Snake wrote the majority of all the other Skid Row albums anyway), so what is missing from the new Skid Row... answers on a post card to...

Sebastian Bach said recently he was going to have 'i was a' inked above his 'Youth gone wild' tattoo and perhaps he has the right idea about letting that classic Skid Row era become the past tense. But nostalgia keeps creeping in and perhaps until all the old fans can let go, the new Skid Row are going to continue to disappoint.

If this album had been a powerful storming rock classic, filled with anthems, stand out riff and screaming vocals on the choruses, some maybe could have forgot about 'Thickskin'. Neither of the last two releases have reflected what the band is capable of, but overall 'Thickskin' has better tracks than 'Revolutions Per minute'

5/10
Kerri