Why does this suck so much? A hair metal supergroup featuring ex-Lamb of God drummer Chris Adler and Girish and the Chronicles frontman Girish Pradhan should be right on my ally, but an underwhelming EP, two utterly forgettable albums and a slew of equally uninspiring singles later, Firstborne have failed to live up to even the lowest of expectations set by their promising pedigree.
Adler has made no secret of his disgruntlement after being fired from Lamb of God in 2019, having gone on record about feeling creatively stifled by being forced to play "the same song 10,000 times" while in the band, and declaring himself "unwilling to paint by numbers". His defiance might have held water while Adler was off making more interesting albums with the likes of Protest the Hero and Megadeth (and overtly xenophobic ones, in the case of the latter). Since his departure, however, Lamb of God have gone on to release two surprisingly solid, if comparatively unremarkable records, while Adler has bounced around from one ill-fitting/fated cock-rock escapade to another, including a failed Nitro reunion and an actually released Michael Angelo Batio album with some of the most heinous (pre-AI-era) cover art you'll ever see.
Firstborne are by far the most promising of Adler's subsequent projects, being a heavy metal supergroup that sees the still-renowned sticksman teaming up not only with Pradahn, who is one of—if not the—most talented new vocalists in modern hard rock/metal; but also bassist James LoMenzo, known for playing on the two best modern Megadeth albums, along with Black Label Society and a bunch of other other Zakk Wylde-assosciated projects; and supposed "soft shred" pioneer Hugh Myrone. While I'm not sure about the softness of Myrone's shred, everything else about the band seems teed-up to absolutely knock it out of the park. As Heavy Blog's resident hair metal enthusiast, however, I'm here to tell you that this absolutely blows.
Lucky—which is being touted as the band's "full-length debut", despite Gods of Fire having already been released in 2023—is an entirely uninspired affair that fails to harness any of its lofty contributors' strengths. "Again" starts things off in flat yet inoffensive fashion, sounding like a Skid Row castoff, with Adler's distinctive snare sound and double-bass style, along with Pradhan's distinctive wails cutting through the mix. However, both feel awkwardly restrained, as if just laying down a first demo rather than delivering a defiant album opener. The same can be said for "Shine", which sounds like something left off of Subhuman Race or that one album Mötley Crüe did with "rock icon" John Corabi. Sandwiched in between the two tracks is "Rescue Me", which opens with the utterly atrocious lyrics "Sailed across the seven seas / memories of us dancing in the breeze / singing this song with a bleeding heart full of scars" and sounds like something Steel Panther wouldn't even stoop to making (fun of). Is this what people think Poison sound like?
Adler's drumming might feel uninspired, but it's Pradhan's performance that sounds completely phoned in. As capable a vocalist as he clearly is, he seem entirely lost without his Chronicles, and its his subpar performance that often brings down even Lucky's most promising moments. There's the aforementioned "Shine", which has a strong enough riff and rhythm to have been turned into something at least passable, as well as "Normandy" which starts off with a promising Queensrÿche-esque riff which is immediately undone by Pradhan's ill-fitting and off-key-sounding melodies.Then there's "Only a Fool", which proceeds unexceptionally until Pradahn appears to drop into a Whitesnake-style blues break before he and his companions erupt into a mumbled chant of "la la la" that sounds like Slade or Sweet, except without any of their finesse or passion.
The rest of the band don't get off the hook that easily though. "Heavens Return" [sic] starts strong and is built around a cool a riff that might have worked in the hands of the Chronicles, but Firstborne don't know what to do with it and the song ends up just fades out without ever going anywhere. They save the worst for lat though, interrupting the otherwise unremarkable "Minefiled" with an interpolation of Iron Maiden's Trooper into a feel good party anthem that comes off more like Kid Rock's bastardisation of Warren Zevon rather than Veil of Maya's supercharged djentrification of the same song (along with Parkway Drive's "Sleepwalker").
I want to like Lucky as much as the guy in the "Wake Up" video (below), but—while that is surely the best song on the album—he still ends up being the only good thing about it. Adler has already got out ahead of criticisms like mine, saying Firstborne is primarily about "having fun" compared to the "toxic" negativity he felt at the tail end of his time with Lamb of God. Indeed, Lucky sounds like a bunch of guys getting together and having a good old jam together. But while I'm happy for the fun had by Adler and Firstborne's other members, that doesn't mean they have to inflict the experience upon the rest of us, nor that we should be happy to receive it. Everyone involved in Firstborne can do and has done much better than this. They shouldn't settle for such average, uninspired output, and neither should we.