Lecherous Gaze

This fun-filled four-tracker strips rock & roll of all high-minded pretensions and so-called evolutions it may have acquired (or claimed to acquire) over the past 50 years in order to expose its fundamental spirit in all of its crude, filthy, and rebellious glory. The members of Oakland's Lecherous Gaze may have their tongues planted firmly in cheek, mind you, but that's no reason to dismiss the raw power (reference intended) of their wonderfully loose, direct, and lascivious hard rock sound, as promiscuous cuts like "Phaze" (complete with cheery handclaps), "Sold," and "R'n'R Lust" pogo on by, channeling everyone from Chuck Berry to the Stooges to Ted Nugent to Zen Guerrilla to Valient Thorr. The slower-paced "Graveyard" finds vocalist Lakis Panagiotopulas coming off like Glenn Danzig on downers, but even that so-called "defect" actually only augments Lecherous Gaze's charming, every-band appeal. Now this appeal may require a set of veteran musical ears trained to recognize all of these clever subtleties amid drunken classic rock bombast, but then, that's surely the selective audience that the quartet is preaching to, anyway. Buckle up! ~ Eduardo Rivadavia