Some bands just have a swagger, it’s laid back, it’s sexy and bluesy and quite possibly smells a tad too much of Brut/Hai Karate. The Rolling Stones had it, Aerosmith had it, Bad Company had it, Whitesnake had it and now so do Land of Gypsies (LoG). The L.A. band may be little over a year old, but there’s some familiar old names here which have put their stamp on the band’s eponymously titled debut album.
So, who are these familiar old names? Well, LoG are fronted by former XYZ and one-time Great White vocalist Terry Ilous alongside the bassist and guitarist from Supersonic Blues Machine Frabrizo Grossi and Serge Simic. This gives LoG a great melodic rock sheen placed over a solid blues rock backbone with Ilous seemingly casting not one drop of sweat, he makes it look so damned easy as he croons through tracks such as ‘Trouble’, ‘Rescue Me’ and ‘Rambling Man’. This means that not only does ‘Land of Gypsies’ have the accessibility and foot tapping nature of Bad Company and early Foreigner as well as Great White with just enough of a pinch of Deep Purple mkIII, it also means that anyone would be forgiven for thinking that this is an unearthed album from Whitesnake sitting somewhere between ‘Slide it In’ and ‘Whitesnake’ as Ilous rasps like David Coverdale.
There is a rather strong air of familiarity about ‘Land of Gypsies’, many of the tracks are cause almost instant sing-a-longs in a feeling that we’ve heard it before. Yet, this does not bring contempt, it does give a lot of enjoyability to the album, it does give a solid foundation stone for the band to strike out and develop their own sound as a whole and it will be interesting to see this band grow from here.
