CD Review of   
Relentless 
Walter Trout and the Radicals

BLUES WAX REVIEW of  RELENTLESS 9/11/03

 Relentless can be viewed as an apropos title considering Walter Trout has been relentless in performing some of the most powerful, guitar driven Blues-based Rock of any practitioner in the last twenty or so years. Picture someone playing hard, as if trying to make Stevie Ray Vaughan look like a slacker.  

Given that, Trout is unencumbered by notions of twelve bars and a rhyme scheme of AAB, his music is a celebration of life, not a dirge! He is also among the very best at what he does.

Even though this album was recorded live in Amsterdam, you won't be able to tell it from a studio album save a spot or two. It is not recorded and produced like his Tampa Bay Blues Festival 2000 double CD replete with crowd applause and Trout's exchanges with the audience.

The album explodes from the first note on the opening track, "I'm Tired," a standard Trout song. The vocal lament of missing his baby while on the road to success is punctuated with soaring riffs of screaming guitar!

He continues the road weary lament in the second track, "The Life I Chose." All that energy being poured out by Walter is supported by Sammy Avila on B-3 organ and backing vocals, Jimmy Trapp on bass and a drummer with manic stamina, Joe Pafumi.

Trout's songwriting can be overshadowed by the fret work, but a second and third listen reveal often gut wrenching emotion, pathos and poignancy. For the latter try "Collingswood" in which memories of abuse to the protagonist and his mother still haunt the psyche of the contemporary narrator.

Trout amazes again with "Mercy" which is an up-tempo, rip-roaring Gospel-esque number. The guitar is purposefully as tumultuous as the lyrics about the "judgement day." "A million souls cryin'" and "I see young folks die/On cocaine street," he mourns. Is the end near? Well, the end of the album is; "Mercy" is the closer.