Review Summary: Styx's venture into the concept album; the results are mixed, at best. Some songs are good, others are bad. Listen at your own risk.
Styx. That name strikes fear into the hearts of Satan-haters, Greek mythologists and Zeppelin fans around the world. The first two may require some research on your part, if you're a complete imbecile. The third one should be obvious. The band Styx had a string of rather large hits in the '70s and early '80s- think 'Lady', 'Come Sail Away', 'Babe' (that one makes even me shudder, and I like the guys), 'The Best Of Times', and of course 'Mr. Roboto', made famous because people make fun of it. It's the Lindsay Lohan of songs.
The difference is that when you look at Lindsay Lohan, you realise that she is more or less pointless, apart from being easy on the eyes, whereas 'Mr. Roboto' isn't exactly easy on the untrained ears. To those who enjoy the work of Styx, it is a divisive work, from a larger divisive work: 'Kilroy Was Here', a concept album concerning a futuristic world where rock music is banned and rock star Robert Kilroy is thrown in jail for the framed murder of a 'Majority for Musical Morality' member. Ignoring all the obvious jokes about Ben Elton's theft of the story for 'We Will Rock You', that vapid little musical currently running in God knows where, the concept is thin. The band members, by and large, weren't satisfied with the direction that their band was headed, speared largely by keyboardist, vocalist and writer of one of the few pieces of *** that the band ever managed to spawn, 'Babe'- Dennis DeYoung. The rest of the band wanted to play rock music, and they felt that they weren't getting it.
And really, they weren't- much of 'Kilroy' is pop rock, at best, and 'Roboto' is flat-out new wave. A further insult to the band was the tour that followed the release of the album, which contained several numbers done to fit the story of the album. (Drummer John Panozzo was so embarrassed by the whole thing that he once played an entire set with a paper bag over his head, and Tommy Shaw would infamously comment in a 'Behind the Music' interview: "I just didn't want to be writing songs about robots...".) But DeYoung got his concept album, and lost the band after that. They went on hiatus for seven years, reformed 4/5 of the way, made another album that is a real solid contender for the worst album of all time ('Edge of the Century'), broke up again, reformed all of the way five years later, did a reunion tour, slowly began drifting apart, somehow released another album ('Brave New World')), and then the *** really hit the fan. DeYoung was ejected from the group due to an issue concerning his ability to perform on stage (he wanted the group making time for his tinnitus and light sensitivity, despite trying to get bassist Chuck Panozzo's credit wiped from the previous album for not playing on the tracks because he was, um, suffering from high-class, recent onset AIDS at the time). The group continues today without him, and he plays solo.
This was the last effort by the classic-era Styx, and really, it wouldn't even fit comfortably into the career of an outlandish band like Queen. But taken on its own, the album has some decent content, and it must be said, it works rather well as a whole. The sound is unified throughout, with an increasing emphasis on the synthesisers at the expense of the loud, extended guitar parts that were the key point of the band's early career. (Two of the 'guitar' solos are performed on synthesiser, even.) The songs are divided more or less evenly between the DeYoung and Shaw-James Young camps, and if there's any problem there, it's that there are too few of them- really, there are only eight songs, and only about four of those would be able to stand well on their own.
The best songs are 'Mr. Roboto', which, despite its infamy brought on by the rather silly video, actually contains a great hook and innovative use of vocoder; 'Haven't We Been Here Before', which falls way too far into power ballad territory for its own good, but has the brilliant melody so characteristic of such songs; and 'Just Get Through This Night', which falls flat within the concept of the album, but has a decent melody with a distinct Eastern influence. The nadirs are obvious, I mean you could spot them from a mile away: 'Don't Let It End' is cheesy even by power-ballad standards, 'Double Life' wanders around for four minutes without getting anywhere, 'High Time' fails to work outside the album at all, and, in what may be the absolute nadir of their recording career, 'Heavy Metal Poisoning' shows just how much JY hated this album, with an awful, insipid melody and clueless lyrics. The tune was nearly redeemed for me by its promotional video, in which JY and the Panozzos dance around cluelessly to unintendedly hilarious effect. They all hated the project.
But you shouldn't, just based on the negatives. As a whole work, 'Kilroy' is actually kind of fun to listen to, although not always for the right reasons. The hardcore rock fans will just hate this album, but the casual rock listener will be able to pick up on the decent qualities buried within it, and the new-wave lover will just adore this. Achtung, though. 3/5
