Customer Reviews

Wicked Wonderland [Vinyl]

5 star:		(34)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(9)
1 star:		(31)

 

 

What a heap of garbage this turned out to be. A true waste of plastic.
There is not a memorable song on the entire CD. To make matters even worse,
Lita's husband, Jim Gillette, contributes embarrassingly laughable cookie-monster
vocals throughout the disc in a disastrous attempt to bring Lita into the current
nu-metal genre. A bad, bad idea, and a slap in the face to her fans of old.
Hey, Lita! Thanks for the coaster!

Time has not been good to Lita Ford. After more than 20 years out of the limelight -- that's 20 years she could have spent writing new songs -- she makes her comeback, not with a bang but with a lifeless fizzle. This album should only be for the diehards, the few fans she has left. Curious onlookers need not apply. Consider classic Lita for your introduction.

If your favorite Lita Ford songs are among the following; "Gotta Let Go", "Back To The Cave", "Shot Of Poison", "Falling In & Out Of Love", "Hungry", "Close My Eyes Forever", "Kiss Me Deadly", "Only Women Bleed", Don't Let Me Down Tonight", "Under The Gun", and "Lisa" then you might as well set fire to your hard earned cash rather than spend it on this abomination. I understand that Lita has a family now, but that doesn't excuse her husband Jim Gillette's (formerly of speed/shred metal band Nitro) vocals being arguably more prominent than hers on HER album. He may have been able to shatter glass with his huge vocal range back in the late 80's, but his former band was a musical circus act that featured great technical ability on top of songs that displayed the sense of melody and lyrical sophistication one would expect to hear if a middle school kid had written them. This CD takes that sort of "musical" sense and combines it with a Nine Inch Nails sort of techno experimental vibe with only a little bit of the Lita of old to tease the fans hoping for something that could stand beside her late 80's/early 90's heyday. The lyrical content is overtly sexual banality of the sort one would expect to spring from the mind of a 12 year old boy who has spent entirely too much unsupervised time watching the likes of Vivid video or Girls Gone Wild and surfing endless internet porn. Now, I know Lita's lyrics often had a sexual tinge in the past, but were often witty, coy, and playful. The difference between then and now is like comparing Gypsy Rose Lee with her big feather arrays showing glimpses of skin to titillate as opposed to breaking out a speculum and performing a full pelvic exam on a typical streetwalking prostitute. Lita's previous CD "Black" was a bit of a disappointment as well with it's grungey sound, but at least it had a couple songs worthy of making my 80 minute CDR compilation of her best work. This CD has NOTHING that comes close to being her best work and really sounds like an experimental Jim Gillette project with Lita as a guest rather than her own solo CD. The record company should have refused to release this debauched mess of a CD and told her to try again by bringing in some outside writers to work with Lita and locking her husband out of the studio......

This is what we get ?? Mostly Garbage & it's too bad as some of these songs sound like they could have been cool if Gillette would stay out of them ! I am buying a Lita ford album not a jim & Lita album .
That said , i have been buying lita's solo album since "out for blood" hit stores , i was hoping for a good rock n roll album & that is not what it is ,lita needs to get into a studio , Leave Jim at home & get a producer on the job .
This cd is average at best , what a bummer after such a long wait .

Who would have guessed that Lita Ford's new rock album would not feature rock or Lita Ford?

Samples, boring quasi-metal guitaring, poor mixing and muffled vocals run rampant on this album. How she was convinced to attempt covering up poor songwriting with downtuned guitars and random noise is beyond me. Lita's vocals are often spoken instead of sung, but most of the singing is handled (poorly) by her husband, Jim Gillette (of the hilariously bad D-list hair band Nitro). On many of the tracks, Lita is barely present vocally. Lyrically, this is a sad attempt by two borderline elderly people trying to be sexy and shocking. While the Lita Ford of the 1980's might have gotten away with this if it was done with more talent, the turkey necked, grey haired Lita of 2010 only serves to make these lyrics more revolting. And young or old, the thought of Jim Gillette having sex is enough to turn the stomach of even Gerri Miller, and she sustains herself on a diet of grubs and ants picked off the bark of felled trees in the forests of the Pacific Northwest, so that's saying something.

Listening to this album makes you embarrassed for poor Lita. Old school rock fans will be disappointed that the album is a complete departure from anything she has done. Modern metal fans can only be enraged by what sounds like a parody of their genre of music.

The only way I can see anyone enjoying this album is in a Mystery Science Theater 3000, so-bad-it's-good comedic sense. As a longtime fan of her, I find this abomination too painful to laugh at.

Lita's legacy as a rock icon is forever destroyed.

Love Lita's voice and really liked her albums back in the day. I also like modern sounding rock music and stylistically moving on artists.

Soooo.... the music on this CD ain't too bad, but Jim Gilette's voice and vocals SUCK SO BAD, they ruin everything. NO ONE wants to hear that on a LF-CD. That's what she needs to learn for future albums. Sorry Lita, I really wanted to love your new album, but you need to realize you should separate your private life from your professional career.

This is by far the worst MP3 album I have ever purchased. I am saddened that this is all that remains of Lita Ford.
I wasn't expecting fine art or anything but this album is a waste of both time and money.
I read another review in which somebody mused that maybe this album had been made with Garage Band. I've heard better quality from garage band ... really, It is that bad.

VERY POOR - COULD DO BETTER.
POOR production value.
POOR songwriting
POOR musical performance
POOR vocal performance
WAY TOO MUCH Jim Gillette

Lita was quoted as saying that this album was sort of a "sexual autobiography"; describing her often kinky relations with husband Jim Gillette. That's not really the subject matter I expected or wanted to hear.

EDIT:
Because I loved Lita Ford's previous work I didn't listen to all the sample before I purchased this album. I didn't know much about Wicked Wonderland before I purchased it, other than it was Lita Ford.

Ok, I admit I listened to Lita in the 90's. There were virtually no commercial heavy female rock singers. I was so excited that she released her first solo since the runaways. The songs were good, the guitar work too but the vocals were BAD BAD BAD.. In the 90's she continued to play an Evil guitar and with some heavy studio magic her vocals were tolerable but not really good. Since then so many incredible female heavy rock vocalists have emerged.(Doro Pesch for example who really has earned the Queen OF Rock title Hands down!) Again I was hopeful that the music would be great and that her vocals would show some improvement. Why would she come back after 15 years with something that wasn't even marginally good? Nowaday's just having the look doesn't cut it...Sadly the only good in this cd is the cover and the name..The music is heavier, But heavy is good as long as you can vocally live up to it. Sadly, she not only uses the studio magic In a big way to cover her lack of vocal quality, she has her husband growling and snarling as well....Sorry Lita, I wanted to like it.. but it's JUST REALLY BAD! I think you should continiue to play your ass off but PLEASE For the LOVE OF GOD(or Beast) get a Real Female vocalist.

Wow... it's a pity that one of my all time heroes of metal would actually release this album. The tunes are homogenous and boring, there's nothing new at all and it's really quite the waste of time to listen to. The most basic ingredients of rock and roll... a great hook... a shredding solo... a creative and pulsing rhythm... yeah all of these ingredients are missing from this collection of pointless jam sessions. What you WILL find are rip-offs galore of much better song writers of the metal genre, poorly assembled into this directionless trash. Lita: You can do better than this.

What can I say? WICKED WONDERLAND, Lita Ford's first album of new original material in 14 years, was, without a doubt, 2009's Worst Album of the Year. In fact, it was so bad that I wasn't even going to bother doing a review for it. But then I got to thinking...the reason I do such in-depth reviews on albums I like is because I hate the ones that just say "This is a GREAT album!!! Buy this album!!!"
WHY is it a great album??? So, on the flip side of the coin...why is this a bad album?
Well, it's loud, it's noisy, it has no sense of structure or melody, it's lyrics are infantile and one-note, and, worst of all, it shows no growth whatsoever in either Ford's guitar playing or vocal skills.
Love or hate her work on RCA, those three albums allowed Ford the chance to stretch and grow; her playing became more nuanced and original, while her voice, while never particularly strong, developed into a decent lead vocal.
Sadly, that's all pretty much disappeared on WICKED WONDERLAND...her playing is boring and unoriginal, her vocals shallow and screechy. And the lyrics....oh, God, the lyrics!! A chronicle of her's and husband Jim Gillette's sex life, the disc comes across as nothing more than a heavy metal version of any recent Janet Jackson album....and that's not a good thing! I can see why no label, major or indie, signed on for distribution...marketing this disc is going to be VERY hard!
Kicking things off is the thundering "Crave." This could have been a decent cut, what with it's blistering cuitar and pounding drums, but the lyrics are so sophomoric it's not funny! I mean, c'mon, people...this is a 51 year old woman talking about how great her ass is!
This lunacy continues with "Piece." As the mother of two pre-teen boys, does Ford really want her kids (not to mention their friends!) hearing and reading about how her fan's "privates start to swell" when she plays? Memo to Mama Gillette....usually when you have to talk about how hot you are....you're NOT!!
Case in point...the photo that accompanies track three in the CD booklet, "Patriotic S.O.B." ~ talk about airbrushed and nip/tucked! That said, there's a decent enough energy to the track, but, once again, the lyrics are SO stupid, while the lead vocal verges on painful. NOT good.
Once again, usually when you have to announce that you're something...say, hot...you're usually not ("With my voice I hypnotize/I'm so erotic"). That said, "Scream" has one of the disc's best arrangements, beefy and full-bodied. A decent lead vocal also helps.
"Inside" has a nice push/pull vibe to it. Jim Gillette's steely vocals (usually nothing more than a run of the mill metal growl) nicely compliment his wife's silkier ones, while Ford tosses off a few licks here that actually seem to have some thought behind them. One of the two tracks that prevented this from being a one star review.
Not nearly as strong is the album's insipid title track. Consisting of pretty much every heavy metal cliche, this is like the ignorant country bumpkin cousin to the Runaways' "Dead End Justice"....in other words, it's a HUGE step BACKWARDS for Ford. What may have been cute and kitchy at 17 is pathetic and moronic at 51.
"Do me Big Daddy!" Those are both the lyrics and attitude behind "Indulge." Now, everyone is entitled to whatever kind of relationship they want to have behind closed doors, but as stated elsewhere (and as is made clear by the death of Ms. Jackson's career!), it doesn't always make for the best source material. All in all, a silly, sad little track.
Lyrically "Love" isn't much better, but at least there's a sense of structure to the song that's lacking from most of the rest of the disc. Ford's vocal has a nice edge to it, even being genuinely playful at times (vs. the canned attitude that dominates most of WICKED WONDERLAND). Ultimately, I would call this one a draw.
The cliches also run rampant in "Betrayal", a track that sums up everything that is bad about the disc. With fourteen years off, you would think Ford would have had time to hone her craft/skills, but she's just recycling bad Deep Purple/Black Sabbath/Dio etc. here. There is not one original note in this cut, which is down right awful.
Up next is "Sacred", the disc's only true gem. Full of real emotion (vs. posturing and posing), an honest, heartfelt lead vocal (vs. howling) and smart lyrics ("'Till death do us part ain't long enough/But the Hallmark cards say all that stuff"), this cut proves that there's still hope yet for Ford.
"Truth" grinds out at a breakneck pace that is just unrelenting. This would have been a nice kick to the gut on a more varied album. but with the way things are here, well, it just seems like yet another cut with a thrashing groove, so it sort of gets lost in the mix.
The same thing can be said about "Everything." Yes, there are some nice riffs here, and the piano runs are a cool change, but pretty much everything else about the song is interchangable with every other track on the disc. For someone who is so into variety in the bedroom....well, I just wonder why that doesn't cross over into the studio?!?
The disc officially wraps up with the dreadful "Bed", which just drones on and on and on and.....! Full of inane lyrics, weak vocals and lame instrumentation, this track truly is an embarrassment for Ford, someone who's been doing this now for 35 years.
The initial pressing of 25,000 copies include two bonus tracks, "Garden" and "Push." (Don't worry if you haven't gotten the album yet....my gut instinct tells me this first batch is going to be around for a loooong time!). Of the two, "Garden" is the stronger cut, with sort of a Van Halen vibe to it, but, once again....those lyrics! OUCH!! "Push" just kind of drags on....I can see why this one didn't make the final cut (Well, beyond that initial 25,000!).
So what do I think Lita Ford has to do in order to recover from the MAJOR misstep that is WICKED WONDERLAND? Well, A) she has to get out of the bedroom, and into the real world...she's had an interesting life, and there's a lot going on nowadays. Use that! B)She has to realize that rock can be loud, but that there's a point where "Loud" just becomes "Noise", and, thus, boring. C) She has to work with a MUCH stronger producer. And D) she has to either write with a much stronger co-lyricist or consider some outside material.
As both a musician and a vocalist, Lita Ford was always decent at best. A fourteen year absence is a luxury for anyone, but you have to be sure you're returning with something a heck of a lot stronger than this disc when you're making your comeback, no matter who you are. You're 51 now, Lita....you're not a runaway any more...instead, you're a middle-aged mom who can still rock, but who also needs to do a considerable amount of growing up. Prove to us you're still bad....somewhere other than in the bedroom, that is! (As with all my reviews, I'm giving the disc an extra half a star for including the lyrics, though, in this case, maybe I should be SUBTRACTING that half a star!).