Description
The following is a summary of the music of the band, Dusk. Dusk is not an album, but a batch of demos recorded between 1991 and 1992 for the group's then label, Atlantic. The band was rejected, then dropped, and the tracks that would eventually surface as Dusk were circulated as bootlegs and would have likely been mostly forgotten if not for the AIDS-related death of singer Ray Gillen, in December 1993. This led, in time, to their official release by the Pony Canyon label in 1998. However, the music of Dusk is mostly one-take jobs, and the band's lack of refinement makes it only acceptable as a parting treasure for avowed Badlands aficionados.
Badlands' long lost, third and final album, Dusk isn't really an
album at all, but a batch of demos recorded between 1991 and 1992
for the group's then label, Atlantic, which first rejected them,
then dropped the band, already mired in personal strife since the
troubled sessions for their commercially disappointing second
album, Voodoo Highway. Accordingly, the tracks that would
eventually surface as Dusk were circulated as bootlegs and would
have likely been mostly forgotten if not for the AIDS-related death
of singer Ray Gillen, in December 1993, and the subsequent rise of
the worldwide web -- both of which undoubtedly helped stimulate
interest in the recordings. This led, in time, to their official
release in 1998 by the Pony Canyon label, but it hardly altered the
fact that Dusk's ten tracks were mostly one-take jobs, reportedly
cut by Gillen, guitarist Jake E. Lee, bassist Greg Chaisson, and
drummer Jeff Martin in just six-to-eight hours. So although the
musicianship was impressively solid and the sound acceptable
enough, Dusk's songs lacked the usual refinements of a final album
mix, and some lyrics were even ad-libbed, resulting in a rather
uniform set, devoid of the characteristic variety and bombast heard
on Badlands' first two albums. Instead, most cuts might accurately
be described as competent blues metal (not unlike previous efforts,
just duller), with rare standouts like foreboding opener Healin',
the distinctively brash Walking Attitude, and the notably funky
Ride the Jack, still draped under a mantle of weary resignation,
reflective of the band's dispirited frame of mind at the time. Also
worth mention, though are The River and Lord Knows -- two
promising sketches that may, with additional studio seasoning, have
been transformed into powerful, slow-burning blues rockers; as well
as the Eastern-flavored Sun Red Sun, which contained intriguing
traces of Alice in Chains, then on the rise along with the entire
grunge nation. But, as mentioned earlier, all of the material
collected on Dusk was far too raw and undeveloped for proper
mainstream consumption, making its commercial existence justifiable
only as a parting treasure for avowed Badlands aficionados. ~
Eduardo Rivadavia
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