Picture a Rock bar on a weeknight..."last round"...03:30a.m. or whatever. Not more than half a dozen of die-hard rockin' vagabonds. One has really nothing to wake up for the next day, the other flirting with disaster since his everlasting love waved bye bye all at once, a couple chattin' serenely in the back and another outlaw talkin' everything with an exiled yet un-apprehensive bartender. To the theoretical sound of any of the fresh portion off the new LILLIAN AXE tracklist everyone's going down. A cigarette, lighters strike twice, another drink to go and the aura becomes tempting yet quite hard to handle. The wasteland of everyone's psychic becomes the best company money can buy at the time...

Steve Blaze is the man I'd like to share dates at a vacation camp with, by the way. His looks and only in the personal photo in the band's MySpace page is self-explanatory. The man's flirted with 'hair' Metal, radical Hard Rock and steel-calm Rock for more than 20 years and has possibly never cared why the mass underestimated his charisma. Not more than 13 months after the solemn "Sad Day On Planet Earth", while preserving the same lineup, Steve offers a piece of art. Another piece of art. And pieces of art seem to be priceless to many (hence no grade will you find at the end of this review). Whoever's familiar with the LILLIAN AXE moniker knows.

Part 1: Five brand new songs, penned and produced by Steve Blaze, mixed by Rob Hovey and mastered by Ty Tabor (KING'S X), form a fresh palette spreading colors in notes with the band flirting with Hard Rock, Heavy Metal, New Rock and even 70s progressive Rock. In a total of 30 minutes you see LILLIAN AXE trespassing the moody atmosphere of the band's 2009 predecessor and rapidly imagine a county lake with calm waters and the sun and moon exchanging places to the blink of an eye. You can meet PINK FLOYD's and ELOY's space tranquility here, TOOL'schronic diversity spews on the rebound, late DOKKEN's melancholic fanfare and possibly LILLIAN AXE's post-80s archives buffering in between, that's where the new songs of "Deep Red Shadows" take hold of your repose. If being asked, "Under The Same Moon" progresses through flattering Hard/Heavy emotions, "47 Ways To Die" gallops to a quest for square bliss, "The Quenching Of Human Life" is quantal and poised yet smooth and cogent, "A Minute Of Years" shows signs of longitude and the "Deep Red Shadows" instrumental outro deafeningly heals the withering soul. Get a load of this and roll forth to the second part, now. LILLIAN AXE does not resemble to any other band, anyway. Not one.

Part 2: Four remakes in acoustic mode. Four favorite LILLIAN AXE classics (yeap, bands that never entered the charts have classics, too) driving the die-hard fan nuts. I always believed enough of the band's everlasting hymns have a suicidal attribute lurking but that's probably a double-faced dominion of Steven Blaze's poetic charisma, again said. "Nobody Knows" was in 1988's "Lillian Axe" LP, "The Day I Met You" storms in from 1993 and "Psychoschizophrenia" opus and "Sad Day On Planet Earth" with "Nocturnal Symphony" belong to 2009's predecessor. The impressive thing 'bout this remakes (especially the first couple, aging to 20 years old by now) is that they show no sign of wear and could comfortably be included as the rest of 'new songs' to this new album for those not on warm relation with the American band's past discography.

Steve Blaze and LILLIAN AXE has gone wild; wild at the fan's inner world. They always had this moody aspect in their music, even when they were credited as 'poser' party rockers in their 80s commercial(?) heyday, but time does tell and after so many years the band has settled down writing one piece of art after the other. Few times has tranquil sagacious music created such piercing emotional conflicts in our days, I confess.