Madam X – Monstrocity – 2017

Monstrocity has to be one of the most anticipated albums of the year. At least for me! I have wanted Madam X to follow up their success with their 1984 We Reserve the Right for as long as I can remember. At least since 1984… And now they finally released their second album 33 years later than the first one. That ought to be some kind of record! This is the classic line-up too. I know they had a period of other musicians joining the Petrucci sisters on bass and vocals around 1991-1992. But I haven’t heard anything from that period so I don’t know how it sounded.

But what I do know is the Monstrocity doesn’t sound anything like what I hoped for. We Deserve the Right was a kinda light pop-metal or glam-metal. Well, it might still be glam metal but they have lost the melodies and there’s really not that much to recognize. At times I can hear that it’s Bret Kaiser that sings but that’s about all. The overall sound is something totally different from back in the day. The album becomes tiresome quite soon and, dare I say it in these #metoo times… There is not enough sex in it.

A far as I’m concerned Madam X built the first album on a sexual concept. Almost every lyric was about sexual encounters of some sort. This is not the case on Monstrocity. I haven’t made any in-depth analysis of the lyrics of course but it doesn’t sound that way. It’s nice to hear Maxine Petrucci play the guitar again but this album is certainly a disappointment.

But if I hadn’t had such a history with the band I might have liked it better. I think that’s what I need to consider when rating this. It’s better than my disappointment based on previous records. But still not very enlightening. I think this monstrocity will be forgotten quite soon.