Disappointing! Upon hearing the Saint had reformed, hoped they’d record a corker of an album, yet these contemporaries of mine (vocalist John Bush complains about life going too fast at age 45 on ‘Chilled’ and hard of hearing on acoustic begun ‘Black Feet’) offer a disc that’s certainly rock, but is it metal? Sure there a couple (too few), but the majority reside in that no man’s land of early 90s "heavy alternative" that clueless A&R/promo people and Concrete Marketing tried to foist on North America as "metal". For every borderline metallic act, like Faith No More, Soundgarden, Pearl Jam or the Infectious Grooves, there was a countless major label never-was like Eleven, Greta or Strip Mind. Hell, "Symbol Of Salvation" was one of this continent’s last great metal albums for nearly a decade!

Unfortunately, "La Raza" has more in common with that other lot, or today’s Nickleback, Creed or Asylum scribe Kevin Alba’s faves, Hinder. Joey Vera (bass) has been quoted as saying he and Bush decided to write good songs, without any restrictions as to what they would sound like (or genre they’d fit into), which is evident, by the more commercial (long ago you could say "radio friendly", but does anything get played on radio these days? Anybody listening?), up-to-date sound. Can anyone hear the opening metronome clicks to ‘Loose Cannon’ without thinking of War’s ‘Lowrider’? After the orchestral/acoustic intro, it turns into a decent screamer, but ‘Get Off The Fence’ stands apart from the rest, the cream of the crop, in terms of metal content. Some decent guitar in ‘Head On’, as well as a punky ‘Little Monkey’ (a diatribe against some Hollywood director, featuring the line: ‘small penis, king of the lot. Hard to tell what’s getting bigger, your belly or your ego’). The concluding ‘Bandit Country’ kicks off like a wayward Monster Magnet tune.

Let’s just hope any live dates minimize the number of "La Raza" inclusions.