{"id":12913,"date":"2014-05-02T01:00:57","date_gmt":"2014-05-02T05:00:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/southeastofheaven.com\/?p=12913"},"modified":"2022-01-06T19:51:51","modified_gmt":"2022-01-07T00:51:51","slug":"album-review-red-dragon-cartel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.southeastofheaven.com\/?p=12913","title":{"rendered":"Album Review: Red Dragon Cartel"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/southeastofheaven.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/RedDragon.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-12914\" src=\"https:\/\/southeastofheaven.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/RedDragon-300x287.jpg\" alt=\"RedDragon\" width=\"300\" height=\"287\" \/><\/a>Red Dragon Cartel<\/strong><br \/>\n<strong> Release Date:\u00a0<span class=\"st\">January 28, 2014<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The disappearance of legendary guitarist Jake E. Lee from the world of rock n\u2019 roll is this stuff legends and tales are made of. Over the years I heard all kinds of stories of the former Ozzy Osbourne\/Badlands axe slinger. I heard he was homeless. I heard he was playing in the corner of shithole bars in Las Vegas. I even heard at one point that he was a roadie for Ozzy which while not true would\u2019ve been hilarious. All rumors aside, nobody really seems to know just where he was but towards the end of 2013 his name started to resurface in the scene and talks of his return were beginning to the flood the internet.<\/p>\n<p>2014 marked the return of guitar Jake E. Lee with his much anticipated band Red Dragon Cartel. I have to say that my interest was piqued and that I couldn\u2019t wait to hear what Jake E. Lee had up his sleave for us. As the opening riff to \u201cDeceived\u201d kicked in, I just shook my head back and forth. First off, the production was horrendous. Second, what was this? \u201cBark at the Moon\u201d lite? Even the singer and his exaggerated, failed attempt to sound like Ozzy just made me make that face. You know that face you make when you\u2019ve just eaten a sour patch kid? Yeah, THAT face. All I could do was hope that it would get better from there.<\/p>\n<p>The 2<sup>nd<\/sup> song \u201cShout it Out\u201d started off pretty decently but this a great example of how a horrible chorus can totally ruin a song. This has to be one of the single most annoying songs I\u2019ve ever heard in my life and \u00bd way through the song was screaming, \u201cPLEASE BE OVER SOON!!!\u201d \u201cFeeder\u201d kicks in, again, sounding promising but this time we have Cheap Trick\u2019s Robin Zander playing the role of Ozzy, Jr. Dude you\u2019re fucking Robin Zander. Why try and sound like Ozzy while singing \u201cPicking daisies in the summertime.\u201d Um, ok dude.\u00a0\u00a0 This album is totally losing me.<\/p>\n<p>Song for song Red Dragon Cartel just totally missed the mark. I found myself completely underwhelmed by the subpar songwriting and even Jake\u2019s playing left little to be desired for me. In all honesty, I just found this album to be unlistenable. Even the impressive guests such as Robin Zander, Paul DiAnno, and Sass Jordan could save this album from crashing and burning for me. There is nothing natural sounding about this album\/band whatsoever. It sounds so contrived, thrown together, and forced. There is no real flow to the songs and the songs lack any and all dynamics. This was a really disappointing thing for me to hear and to be honest, Red Dragon Cartel kind of makes me wish Jake would go back into retirement\u2026 or being a roadie for Ozzy\u2026 being homeless\u2026 whatever it was he was doing. What I can tell you that he\u2019s not doing is making great music.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Red Dragon Cartel Release Date:\u00a0January 28, 2014 The disappearance of legendary guitarist Jake E. Lee from the world of rock n\u2019 roll is this stuff legends and tales are made of. Over the years I heard all kinds of stories of the former Ozzy Osbourne\/Badlands axe slinger. I heard he was homeless. I heard he was playing in the corner of shithole bars in Las Vegas. I even heard at one point that he was a roadie for Ozzy which [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,277],"tags":[1152,1154],"class_list":["post-12913","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-album-reviews","category-music-news","tag-jake-e-lee","tag-red-dragon-cartel"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.southeastofheaven.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12913","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.southeastofheaven.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.southeastofheaven.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.southeastofheaven.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.southeastofheaven.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12913"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.southeastofheaven.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12913\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19769,"href":"https:\/\/www.southeastofheaven.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12913\/revisions\/19769"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.southeastofheaven.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12913"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.southeastofheaven.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12913"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.southeastofheaven.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12913"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}