EZoo – Feeding the beast

Ezoo is a new project from Graham Bonnet and Dario Mollo.  Graham Bonnet is best known for his time with Rainbow but also sang with Alcatrazz and Michael Schenker Group.  Dario Mollo worked with Glenn Hughes in Voodoo Hill and also worked with former Black Sabbath singer Tony Martin on three albums.

I’ve got to be honest – I had incredibly low expectations for this album having heard Graham Bonnet butchering Rainbow hits on tour as his voice sounded shockingly bad.  Happily though he sounds far better on this album than he did on those live shows.  Despite that, while his voice sounds fine much of the time and at times the fact it’s not perfect actually works well with the song, at times he’s clearly struggling vocally, mainly on the higher or more powerful parts.

It’s a bit of a strange mix really here – you’ve got covers of Rainbow’s “Eyes of the world” and “Since you been gone”, some Alcatrazz covers and some covers from The Cage.  So that’s a big chunk of the album that’s just looking back at the early parts of their careers with a few new songs thrown in.  I have to say I’d hoped for all new material – with one or two covers at most – this many covers feels like either laziness or a lack of faith in their new material.

Check out “Guys from god” here…

There are a lot of good rock bands around these days, and an album from two musicians of this calibre should have been able to show the newcomers how it’s done, but sadly it doesn’t manage to do this.  Instead you’ve got a good hard rock album rather than a great one.  I think the fact that Dario Mollo’s website makes no mention of EZoo tells you everything you need to know really.
I had very low expectations for the album, and while the album was better than I expected, it’s not an album I’d rush out to buy.

Track listing:

1. You are your wallet
2. The flight of the Sapini
3. C’est la vie
4. Guys from god
5. Feeding the beast
6. Eyes of the world
7. Colder than cool
8. Too high to be falling
9. Motorbike
10. Since you been gone
11. Don’t look back
12. Coda