Time Signature All thru the night...

Genre: glam metal

I bought this album back in the day because Jagged Edge's drummer Fabio Del Rio also played the drums on Bruce Dickinson's "Tattooed Millionaire", so I was interested in hearing Del Rio's full time band.

Stylistically, the music on this album is probably typical of the commercially accessible metal of the late 1980s and early 1990s, but, fortunately, without entering the territory of commercial ridiculousness into which a lot of hair metal descended in that era.

Fortunately this album came out in 1990, just before power ballads became obligatory, which means that the ballads on this album were written, not just because there had to be power ballads on pop metal labums, but because the band wanted to write some ballads, which results in some well crafted non-sappy ballads, such as "You Don't Love Me" and "Loving you too Long" (bordering on the sappy, I admit), that work quite well, and the title track "Fuel For Your Soul" is just a brilliant power ballad.

One thig that is interesting is that Jagged Edge, like Fates Warning did on "Parallels" and "Inside Out", blends clean guitars and overdriven metal guitars and generate a sort of melancholic feel, but without ever entering into progressive territory - Jagged Edge is straight hard rock and commercial metal, and has more in common overall with the likes of Def Leppard than Fates Warning, and a track like "Hell Ain't A Long Way" might as well have been a pre-"Hysteria" Def Leppard track.

Stand-out tracks are the opener "Liar" which is a melancholic melodic track that sounds like Def Leppard mated with "Parallels"-era Fates Warning (and this track really sets the tone for the rest of the album), the semi-ballady "Out in the Cold" which is strangely uplifting despite its title and lyrics, "Smooth Operator" with its almost funky sounding guitar riff and typical 80s pumping bass, the ballad "Fuel for your Soul", and "Money Talking" which contains some classic metal guitar riffage that I really like.

This album probably will not appeal to fans of extreme metal and other types of more hard-hitting metal, but fans of hard rock, glam metal, and other types of commercial metal of the late 1980s might like it. Personally, I think this is one of the better glam/pop metal albums of that era.