If a few breaks had come his way,
David "Rock" Feinstein
would have left his mark on the heavy metal masses a long time ago. As the leader of local New York rockers
the Rods
,
Feinstein
supplied vocals and guitar work to quite a few cult classic albums throughout the '80s. Not to mention a little-known fact:
's cousin was none other than
Ronnie James Dio
, and the two played together while both were members of
Elf
. And in 2010,
got around to issuing quite possibly his best solo effort yet,
Bitten by the Beast
. His roots with
Dio
continued to run deep up until the end (
passed away a few months before the release of
), as the album was one of the first to be released on
's newly formed label,
Niji Entertainment
, and even features a track with none other than
himself on vocals, the anthemic
"Metal Will Never Die."
Perhaps unsurprisingly,
leans heavily on '80s metal sounds, including the NWOBHM/
Motoerhead
-esque album opener,
"Smoke on the Horizon,"
as well as
"Evil in Me,"
"Kill the Demon,"
and a tune that was co-written by
and
, the album-closing
"Gambler Gambler."
From beginning to end,
is an inspired piece of vintage metal, and will certainly be of interest to metalheads, as it contains one of the last-ever recorded vocals of the great
. ~ Greg Prato