Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
The world we know is crumbling, and whilst that may be a scenario, a reality in which many will find scary, daunting to contemplate, a measure of the forbidden exercise in relinquishing control, what lays beyond the so-called Wrong Side Of Paradise is not the Hell that Milton warned of, but perhaps the realisation that nothing can be as bad, as desperate, or as incendiary as what we refuse to see as our own inferno.
We have built this wall, we add to it, we dig trenches around it, we add barbed wire and sarcastic comments to every conceivable ounce of concrete separation between our lives and what may be on the other side; and if only we could accept that we have imprisoned ourselves in an effort to keep what we falsely believe is the enemy out, then perhaps we might see that those dark clouds are really a perception of the abyss we have conjured in a desperate attempt to feel secure.
The Wrong Side Of Paradise, a place in which the Black Star Riders have taken a sledge hammer to the wall and gifted the onlooker and observer the ability to see what lays ahead, it only takes them to walk through proudly, without a shuffle of a veneration of spirit to understand that there is so much more to life than what the eyes can initially comprehend. Every sense is brimming with possibility, every moment on the guitar hums as if played for all, and not just those with unnerving access and the wherewithal to afford what should be welcomed and unrestricted…namely freedom.
Through the dynamics of tracks such as Better Than Saturday Night, Catch Yourself On, the truth that delves in droves Green And Troubled Land, the finality of This Life Will Be The Death Of Me, the stunning atmosphere shouldered with absolute responsibility in the storming version of The Osmond’s’ sensational hit Crazy Horses, and the album title track of Wrong Side Of Paradise, Ricky Warwick, Christian Martucci, Robbie Crane, and Zak St. John can be seen to be the plotters of the revolution that perhaps arguably we didn’t know we needed. Not one of weapons, but one of liberty!
It is in the freedom and self-expression of the album that the imprisoned are shown how to unlock their cage, and the army of the free can be seen making their move. The Wrong Side Of Paradise…not at all, they are on the right side of rock history.
Ian D. Hall