Kenny Stewart – The Brains behind the Scam (2010)

With a very distracting cover, today we have Dirty Tricks lead singer Kenny Stewart’s debut solo album “The Brains behind the Scam”. Featuring 16 hard rocking tracks, Kenny Stewart takes us for a roller coaster journey with soaring guitars, and his very characteristic vocal style.

Having self-produced the album, Kenny handles all the guitar and programming duties. And immediately you can notice that the use of ‘fake drums’ is very evident and takes some merit out of this release but can easily be compensated by the solid guitar work and singing prowess of Kenny. All tracks have a nice guitar driven structure that allows the vocals to shine and achieve the desired effect.

Starting with very effective guitar work “Tears to a Glass Eye” starts the proceedings with a bang. Most of the album’s songs bear some resemblance due to the fact that Kenny’s vocals are the main highlight of the release, and it might get a bit dull if you don’t immediately dig the vocals. But if you like Dirty Tricks music, then you will fit right at home.

One thing that is worth mentioning is that the overall production is very good, but tends to feel a bit dry after a few songs, mainly because of the monotone sound of the drumming. However, the wide variety of hard rocking guitar sections and superb vocals compensate for many of the misses in this debut album. The addition of some of the extra elements presented in songs like “Crown of Thorns” and “Break my fall” gives this album several changes in the overall pace allowing listeners to digest it more easily.

As we mentioned before, Kenny is a great singer and with this debut album shows he also shows that he has very solid ideas for making cohesive Hard Rock / Traditional Metal songs. Other than the ‘fake drums’ we can’t think of another reason why you shouldn’t add this CD to your old-school Hard Rock / Metal collection of CD’s.

Release: 2010

Country: UK