Pekka To say that I had big expectations for W.A.S.P.'s fourteenth album is, well, a lie. It happened so that I Wanna Be Somebody was the only song of theirs that I was familiar with until my friend told me to give Babylon a try on the evening before they were playing a metal festival in Helsinki that I was anyway going to. I listened to a couple of tracks and was positively surprised, but that surprise paled in comparison with the shock that was caused by the fact that I enjoyed immensely the brilliant feel-good rock show that the band put on the next day.

They only played one track from this album, Babylon's Burning, but in retrospect I wouldn't complain if they'd played several more. This album contains several tracks that stand just as tall as some of their earlier classics, that I've gotten myself familiar with since that sunny afternoon in the summer of 2010. Crazy is a great heavy metal speedster and the half-title track is another masterpiece, and the solid album includes many other good points as well, like Thunder Red with an extremely tasty pair of guitar solos, and the power balladish Godless Run, again with some bold soloing by Doug Blair.

Even the Deep Purple cover Burn makes sense and fits well into the pack, and not just by its title, but the same can't necessarily be said for Promised Land by Chuck Berry. Godless Run would've made a good closer, but hell, despite not making that much sense Promised Land is a pretty damn fun track to close the album with.

My third big surprise regarding this W.A.S.P. matter is the voice of Mr. Blackie Lawless. It's still smokin' hot, one of the finest and most powerful rock voices out there. All in all this album has been an extremely positive experience, guess I've got to find out what happened between it and The Last Command.