Mean Streets

Riot, one of the highly influential and crucial US heavy metal bands which left a big mark on my life and various other oldschool metalheads around the world. Despite the fact that the band has been around for donkey’s years, they are still hungry for swords and tequila like there is no tomorrow. Well, it seems that their seal headed warrior, the mighty Tior, is about to strike once again. On May10th 2024, Riot released their seventeenth full-length album Mean Streets via Atomic Fire Records. If you wish to experience the adventures of the seal-headed warrior once again as the lightning strikes, then hop on and join the ride!

Starting out pretty strong with the opening track “Hail to the Warriors”, we are instantly welcomed with powerful heavy metal filled with thunder and steel, striking hard with full force and it promises right from the get-go that there will be plenty of wonderful things to come. Throughout this thrilling joyride, we get a couple of nice tracks worth checking out such as the uplifting heavy banger “Love Beyond the Grave”, the faster killers like “High Noon” and “Higher”, the epic melodic mid-tempo tune “Before This Time”. When the turn comes for tracks such as “Feel the Fire” and “Open Road”, we get a couple of easy rockers that are going for a more catchy and smooth direction, which is a slight stylistic departure from the rest, but nevertheless still welcome additions on this album. An interesting exception on this album comes in the form of the thrashy heavy and somewhat Judas Priest-like “Mortal Eyes”, the ninth track on the album, a very tight and strong song that turned out to be a very pleasant surprise, and it should not be skipped under any circumstances. Overall, you have plenty of stuff here to find where a couple of songs leave a very strong mark, while others still perform quite well despite not leaving that big of a mark in the end. As the journey comes to an end with the final track “No More”, you truly feel like you’ve reached the point where you just look back at everything and think “I wish I could do it all again”.

The songwriting on this album is quite simple yet still dynamic in terms of styles and ideas that Riot incorporated, and it’s just really difficult not to experience the might and energy of each song as the album goes on. During the entire album, this pretty much feels like one big journey where you experience a turbulent life on the road, driving through the mean streets where you face a lot of peril, while the songs dictate your point of view as a protagonist in this story. The only small issue that I had with this album is that it’s a little bit too long, with a total of 12 songs which are all good individually, but a couple of them do feel a bit redundant and just stacked to prolong the album’s runtime which really wasn’t all that necessary. However, all can be forgiven if you really let go of your mind and just let the songs speak for themselves, constantly pushing you forward to feel the power rising from within. The cover art was handled by the Hungarian artist Gyula Havancsák, who has previously worked for other big names such as Accept, Annihilator, Grave Digger and various others, and his artistic skill wonderfully captured the essence of Riot by depicting the biker clad gang of the band’s seal mascot Tior, riding on the mean streets on a stormy night in their charge for glory. Apart from being visually eye-catching and stylistically beautiful, one interesting detail that I just couldn’t let go of was the fact that the seal biker chick riding behind Tior is exposing her right boob like a lustrous siren. You have to admit that the cover really is impressive but still incredibly over the top to the point I just love it.

Riot’s delivery on this album is very simple yet so on point that it’s so difficult to believe that this is an album coming from a band that is turning 50 next year. Mean Streets is a nice album that offers plenty to enjoy and it certainly did manage to make me happy like I was when I heard the band for the first time more than 10 years ago. You can hear that the album comes from the band’s motivation to continue going forward, whilst still committing themselves fully to get the best out of their passion and dedication as experienced musicians and artists. Mean Streets is a fun thrill ride, so don’t miss out on it!

Written for www.Metalbite.com