A guy laments that he and his lady are drifting apart (“Love on the Rocks With No Ice”).
The cynical dismissal of love as mere sensation (“Love Is Only a Feeling”) is the least of this disc’s problems. F-words, s-words and misuses of God’s name stand out. “Get Your Hands Off My Woman” finds an obsessed stalker warning a drunken letch to stay away from the object of his lust. “Holding My Own” bids adieu to an ex while finding comfort in masturbation. The singer tries to get over a woman—and the sexually transmitted disease she left him with—on “Growing on Me.” Disenfranchised teens with an unhealthy, anywhere-but-here mentality will identify with “Stuck in a Rut.” That tune recommends escaping life by hitting the road. “Givin’ Up” points fans to heroin as a panacea for the daily grind. The twisted “Black Shuck” has a demonic dog destroying a church and slaughtering parishioners (“The congregation’s last line of defense was engulfed in fire/As the flaming priest stepped into the firing line”).
This throwback hair band has all the flamboyance of KISS or Poison, but with a self-aware irony. They don’t take themselves seriously. Even so, parents who fail to take seriously lyrics about drug abuse and perverse sexuality do so at their own peril. Permission denied.