Skid Row: United World Rebellion: Chapter Two

Raise your fist and yell!

You can trust Louder Our experienced team has worked for some of the biggest brands in music. From testing headphones to reviewing albums, our experts aim to create reviews you can trust. Find out more about how we review.

The second of Skid Row’s proposed series of three mini-LPs to be released over several months, and something of a ‘return to their roots’ according to the band, Rise of the Damnation Army certainly does its best to push memories of 2003’s Thickskin and 2006’s Revolutions Per Minute to the back of your mind.

If last year’s United World Rebellion: Chapter One was surprisingly palatable, Chapter Two finds the band truly going for it – this has riffs, balls and more than a tasty (left) hook or two, not least the opening one-two of We Are the Damned and Give It the Gun.

The one slight weak point is the soft-hearted Catch Your Fall, which seems somewhat out of place amid the erupting Molotov cocktails. But then we do get spiffing bonus covers of Sheer Heart Attack and Rats In The Cellar to finish, so it’s not all bad really.

Essi Berelian

Whether it’s magazines, books or online, Essi has been writing about rock ’n’ metal for around thirty years. He has been reviews editor for Classic Rock and Metal Hammer, rock reviews editor for lads mag Front and worked for Kerrang!. He has also written the Rough Guide to Heavy Metal and contributed to the Rough Guide to Rock and Rough Guide Book of Playlists, and the Guinness Book of British Hit Singles (13th edition). Most fun interview? Tenacious D – Jack Black and Kyle Gass – for The Pick of Destiny movie book. An avid record/CD/tape collector, he’s amassed more music than he could ever possibly listen to, which annoys his wife no end.