Nick Oliveri's Uncontrollable - Leave Me Alone

There’s certainly no characters left in the band, outwith Homme, that are on a par with Grohl, Lanegan or Oliveri. The former, of course, is the biggest contemporary rock star in the world, but the trajectory of the latter pair’s careers post-Queens makes for interesting study. They both boasted charisma by the spade; Lanegan - at six-foot-plus and with a hellishly guttural vocal delivery not even remotely suitable for children - is one of the most intimidating presences in modern rock, whilst Oliveri’s wildly primitive style of screaming - most famously showcased on several Deaf cuts - was entirely in keeping with his caveman-like appearance.

The former bandmates have gone down decidedly different paths, though; whilst Lanegan merely drifted away from Queens, spending more and more time on other projects, Oliveri was apparently fired after Homme acted on rumours about domestic violence on the bassist’s part. Whilst Lanegan has collaborated widely since, most notably with Isobel Campbell in a pairing as unlikely as myself starting up front with Lionel Messi, Oliveri has given off the air of a man perennially waiting by the phone for a call from Homme that isn’t going to come. When he did return to the road with Kyuss Lives!, he was eventually forced to depart when an armed stand-off with a SWAT team suggested that the unhinged persona he’d so frequently projected onstage might not have been an act.

The point of that partial Kyuss reunion was that it would promote the individual members’ solo endeavours, and after a slew of acoustic tours, Oliveri has finally made good on that promise with Leave Me Alone. The name he’s recorded it under, Nick Oliveri’s Uncontrollable, is a nod both to the name of the backing band he’ll be touring it with and also, of course, a wry wink to his reputation. Opener “Human Cannonball Explodes” begins, surely not coincidentally, with the sound of keys turning in the ignition - just like Deaf - and soon explodes into a simple, monotonous riff and Oliveri’s characteristically ferocious vocal delivery. It pretty much sets the tone for the rest of the album in doing so, too.

Put simply, Oliveri sells himself dramatically short with the guitar work on Leave Me Alone; as with “Human Cannonball Explodes”, the work on the likes of “Keep Me in the Loop” and “Get Lost with Me” is one-track, rudimentary and totally uninspiring. The lack of imagination is a little less obvious on the cuts that zip along with real punk energy - “Come and You’re Gone” is probably the pick of those - but when the pace drops, the unoriginality of Oliveri’s approach to the six-string is laid bare in pretty brutal fashion.

Of course, during his Queens heyday, Oliveri played bass, but once you remember that, you only run into another issue with this record; the production is totally flat and most of the tracks sound so tinny that even if Oliveri has laid down some sterling lines - which he’s certainly more than capable of - they’d be drowned out anyway. It’s kind of like how there’s basically no bass on, say, Be Here Now, but at least records of that ilk tend to be brickwalled aggressively enough to ensure that they at least turn out arrestingly loud.

Given, too, that the past three years or so have seen Oliveri make the acoustic guitar his primary accompaniment, it’s kind of surprising that Leave Me Alone includes just one song of that ilk; the short but sweet instrumental title track, which at a hundred and three seconds long feels as if it was tossed in as a token gesture. The only thing the album really has to fall back on, at times, is Oliveri’s furious vocals and sheer force of character; sometimes that proves enough, as is the case with the smartly-pitched dramatics of closer "Death Leads the Way", but otherwise, this is a textbook example of an unmistakably talented musician failing to play to their strengths; the result, accordingly, is awkward and muddled.