REVIEWS:
An instrumental supergroup consisting of drummer Terry Bozzio (Missing Persons, Frank Zappa), bassist Tony Levin (King Crimson, Peter Gabriel and notorious session musician) and guitarist Steve Stevens (Billy Idol, Vince Neil) that was the first of such projects on the Magna Carta progressive rock label
--Nick Karn
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(reviewed by Nick Karn)
All-instrumental albums are often a mixed bag, to say the least, especially if they're formed out of the ashes of a supergroup consisting of extremely talented musicians. The second BLS album following their debut Black Light Syndrome has both the glaring flaws and strengths of these types of gatherings. Sure, there are vintage performances from all three - Terry Bozzio shows off quite a bit of great rhythmic workout on the appropriately titled "Spiral", Tony Levin's effective use of Chapman stick pretty much makes the Eastern-tinged epic "Endless" a little worthwhile, and Steve Stevens' lightning fast flamenco guitar runs are all over side two, particularly on "Melt", but within all this very well-played background music, which really works out great when you're playing Solitaire or doing a research paper or something like that, lies a serious flaw - unmemorability.
Seriously, what ultimately makes Situation Dangerous a decent, but virtually non-lasting, impression on the listener is that most of these tracks lack a real solid melodic theme for the musicians to build on, and the structures of them are somewhat rambling excuses for them to just jam aimlessly. With each of these eight 'songs' average around six minutes in length, they don't exactly run at a brisk pace, and towards the middle of the album, I get this feeling of serious boredom like I'm wasting my life away listening to this stuff. Don't get me wrong, there's really nothing offensive about any of it: no blatant displays of flash for the sake of flash, and like I said, it's just fine in the background when you're not paying too much attention to it, but ehh.
There's no real serious analysis I can do for any of these songs, since most of them completely escape my mind after the running time is over with. The first few tracks, however, do have some memorable qualities, but they are not always the best kind of memorable ones. For instance, the opening "Dangerous" is a shameless and pedestrian Led Zeppelin ripoff, with its' main riff a faster version of "Immigrant Song" and I swear I can hear the chord progression of "Dazed And Confused" in its' bombastic slower section. The aforementioned "Endless" does have a neat Eastern-y vibe to it, and it's very pleasant at times, but really, it doesn't do that much to justify its' length at 10 minutes. I'll refrain from using the obvious observation about its' title, though. So in all, if you wanna just hear three great musicians jam away, by all means go after this one, but if you're looking for actual song-based material from this, this is not a good place to go.
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