Score: 4.5 out of 5 Battle-Axes

Posted: 8/20/04

Category: Bluesy Hard Rock

Label URL: www.frontiers.it

Artist URL: www.richiekotzen.com

The average hard rock fan will remember Richie Kotzen as the guy who replaced C.C. DeVille in Poison for the Native Tongue (1993) album, stole Rikki Rockett’s girlfriend, and was unceremoniously disposed of.  Well, that’s the National Enquirer portion of his story.  What you might not realize is that Richie is still crankin’ out albums as a solo artist and that Get Up finds him at the top of his game.

The aptly titled album will definitely get you up out of your chair, and get you movin’.  Kotzen has a great bluesy hard rock style going for him with amazing grooves, emotive, smokey, energetic vocals, and memorable vocal lines and melodies.   Although it’s an odd comparison, when Kotzen gets up in the higher range he sounds like former Soundgarden vocalist Chris Cornell (if he decided to do a blues based album).  When he’s in the lower register, he has bit of a Glenn Hughes (ex-Deep Purple/ex-Black Sabbath) thing going for him.  Guitarwise, Richie is just awesome and one of the few artists that’s still delivering hard rockin’ blues based music.  Songs like the title track, “Fantasy” and opener “Losin My Mind” are some of the best you are likely to hear.  In this day and age, this quality level is really impossible to find. Out of the eleven songs, three soulful ballads appear – “Remember,” “Special,” and “Made For Tonight.”  All are of quality but I would rather that the entire album rocked from beginning to end.