Review – Jason Saulnier

Album:  Break These Chains
Date:  January 19, 2017
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Genre: Old School Metal Chops with Indie Rock Vibe

One Line Review:  Nova Scotia-based Jason Saulnier’s new self-recorded, self-performed, Break These Chains shreds more than a teenage kid working for the all-you-can-eat salad bar at an all-night Bonanza restaurant.

Full review:   Jason Saulnier’s presence in Canadian metal, and the metal industry, cannot be dismissed.  As an independent artist, Saulnier has attained, and retained, worldwide attention with his performance calendar, virtuoso solo style, and online presence.

Saulnier showcased at the Randy Rhoads Tribute spotlight solo, and played Ozzy Osbourne’s Suicide Solution at Rhoadfest in 2010, after his two Ozzy Osbourne audition videos on You Tube racked-up over 88,000 hits – at 5 star ratings – in three months.    His metal covers of “The Devil Went Down to Georgia” received over 100,000 YouTube views, and his latest cover of Steel Panther’s “That’s When You Came In” earned Saulnier a top 5 spot in You Tube’s Music Meets Video contest.

As a musician, Saulnier has played over 500 documented shows, and has interviewed over 900 music legends, as the founder and president of Music Legends.ca, such as Judas Priest’s Rob Halford, and Black Label Society’s Zakk Wylde.

His discography includes over 15 recorded solo albums.

After all this, when asked “if you could play as a guest artist on any record ever, if time and history was not factor, what would it be”, Saulnier’s humble answer is “to be on a Ozzy Osbourne record would be cool, I think, or anyone that asks me to be on one.”

His humble spirit and honest nature can be heard on his new record Break These Chains, recorded in his home studio in 2016, with Saulnier playing all the instruments and performing lead vocals.

Song wise, Break These Chains  is an arrangement of honest shred metal, virtuoso Steve Stevens melodic playing, straight ahead rock riffs,  old school Deep Purple metal, with a dash of funk, ambient Emerson Lake and Palmer keyboards and an indie Husker Du recording sense and style.

Overall the album has a feeling of the classic prog rock and metal gods of yore – Led Zepplin, Black Sabbath, Iron Maiden, Yes – with Motorhead’s Lemmy on lead vocals using long lyrical lines like The Who’s Pete Townsend.  The album closes fast and hard, Randy Rhoads using Anthrax as his back band with Metallica helping with the song arrangements.  (Yes, Anthrax is still “the hardest ever” decades before most modern metal bands.  Not anti-modern metal, but Anthrax set a bar that many are still trying to clear, unsuccessfully, using thick soled Reebok runners that were not cool even when they were cool.)

The album opens with “We Want Your Love” a medium-paced Lemmy-jamming-with-the-Who-in-space tune with big Sabbath solos and guitar sounds.  “Ship of Fools” – not the Robert Plant tune – follows Saulnier’s “what would Prince do” theme by travelling into a light funk, keyboard based jam, with flying guitar solos, into “Gems and Stones” a prog rock country tune.

Yes, a prog rock country tune.

“Passion Now” has a slight Van Halen “Panama” meets the Cult feel, closing with “Chaos and Excitement” and “Break These Chains”, fast, big and loud.

The album is a good listen from front to back, with a vast arrangement of tunes for discerning listeners.

Saulnier’s next step is to build a super group, find a live band to keep up with, and push his chops, into an exciting, frenetic live show.

Remember when everyone bailed on David Lee Roth when he went solo?  Did fans actually listen to “Eat ‘Em and Smile” with guitarist Steve Vai, bassist Billy Sheehan, and drummer Gregg Bissonette?  Check out the track “Shy Boy” and I dare you to find any fault in it, let alone if that is a song Van Halen could have pulled off.  Michael Anthony does not deserve to drive Billy Sheehan’s limo…

If you are brave enough, contact Jason Saulnier to become the band to put Canadian metal on the map.  With the right super group of Canadian metal heads, this band could change the face of modern metal for the better.  Like Anvil, but becoming successful.

Go ahead, I dare you….

**Disclaimer – Jason Saulnier is no way connected with this review and has no idea I was going to ask starving, or not so starving, musicians to start a band with him.  Please keep this mind before contacting him.  That being said, I am sure he won’t mind.  Find him on Facebook and at jasonsaulnier.com.  Or find his address in the phonebook and do some old fashioned stalking.  Remember when stalking took skill and not just an internet connection?   Oh, the good ol’ days…**