review by: Mladen Škot

Another mystery solved. Reading the American guitar magazines, one must wonder where on Earth they find the male models for the "perfect pitch in a month" or "learn to play in 60 days" advertisements. You know, the anonymous guys with shades, jeans, plain T-shirts and "woo-hoo, I'm a rock star" expressions. If such people do exist in real life, what could they be playing, and how would it sound?

The answer: Widow (US). The music: absolutely traditional heavy metal, with the eighties' sound and lyrics so simple that it's hard to believe that English is their mother tongue. Nightlife, their third album, sees Widow take off as a decent Iron Maiden clone. The riffs are catchy, the tempo is just right and the horror lyrics make sense if you pretend it's 1987. Okay, the choruses usually consist of one repeated sentence, but so what — that's not far from what Iron Maiden are doing nowadays, is it?

But after three songs, things go downhill. Someone once said that Venom's "Teacher's Pet" is the worst abomination of a song ever, but Widow have their own ace up the sleeve — "The Teacher's Pet" ("...always winks at me and shakes her ass...") takes no prisoners. Yes, someone, somewhere, really makes this kind of song, kid you not! After that anti-climax, the following five songs just pass as a mid-tempo filler, and the lyrical themes start revolving around under-age girls, prostitutes and beauty queens. The last two tracks, a Van Halen and a Kiss cover, start resembling real songs again but the exercise was pretty much pointless because the originals were much better.

Three decent songs and a serious lack of attitude aren't really enough to carry the whole album through. Maybe Widow would be better off just hanging out in a bar telling the girls they are rock stars? It wouldn't make much difference. (4/10)