Kane Roberts – Saints and Sinners – 1991

I wouldn’t have heard about Kane Roberts if it wasn’t for the fact that he used to play with Alice Cooper. You could almost say that Kane Roberts is responsible for the hardrock-era Alice Cooper did in the late 80’s. Kane was the Guitarist and co-writer of almost every track on Constrictor and Raise your Fist and Yell. Two fine albums I might add. If I hadn’t heard about him before I would have just passed this bargain in the $1 sale bin. Saints and Sinners isn’t actually the most well-known album in rock history.

It’s not even Kane Roberts first solo album. I got his first on vinyl but can’t remember anything from it. Anyway… It was with great curiosity I put this one into my CD-player just to see what it was. Judging from the cover art Saint and Sinners should differ a bit from the first album that looks more “metal”. Maybe you don’t think that you can judge an album by its cover but you actually can. Not always but most of the time. You can almost always tell what kind of music is on it by a single glance.

At first I thought saints and sinners was rather mediocre hardrock, typical for the 80’s hairbands. Pretty lame. But I listened to it again (and again) and there’s actually some good song on there, catchy rock songs that might not be great but serve their purpose and doesn’t demand too much of Kane Roberts vocals. He’s not a bad singer, not great mind you but not bad. It’s sounds pretty good.

The guitar parts aren’t as wild as the solos he did when working with Alice Cooper but it’s sounds ok. I think that’s the epithet of this album as a whole – ok. It’s kind of mediocre but still catchy. It will not go down in history as a great album but it’s still good enough to listen to now and again.