Just in case you were wondering, Killsmith appears to be the nom de plume of one Mr. Neal Smith, original drummer with the Alice Cooper group, back in the days when they were an actual group, and Alice hadn't turned into a family friendly media personality.  Which means that Neal played on some of the defining moments in the history of shock rock.  "Ballad of Dwight Fry," "Halo Of Flies," "Dead Babies" and "I Love The Dead," as well as all the major Alice Cooper hits including "I'm Eighteen," "School's Out," and "No More Mr. Nice Guy."  Right through to the Muscle Of Love album and the dissolution of the original group.

Since then he's played on a wide variety of albums with Billion Dollar Babies, Plasmatics, Buck Dharma from Blue Oyster Cult, even teaming up again with fellow Alice Cooper alumni Dennis Dunaway to form Bouchard, Dunaway, and Smith with another Blue Oyster Cult man, Joe Bouchard.  Before now, the only solo album he's released is a 1999 CD of material he'd recorded back in 1975.  He's also a successful Realtor, so I was intrigued to find out what the combination of shock rock and property sales would end up like.

First things, first.  If you still live with your parents, I wouldn't leave this CD lying around the house.  Not with the plethora of naked women in various 'interesting' poses that are strewn about the booklet.  Your mama won't like it.  She's unlikely to approve of the music either, as Mr Smith has decided to go for a pounding, almost industrial take on classic heavy metal.  A cursory glance at some of the songs also shows the lyrical bent he's going for as he blasts through songs like "Naked And The Raw," "Monsters In The Attic," "How Do You Bleed," "Naked And The Raw" and "Dynasty Of Darkness."  There's no room for fluffy bunnies here!

Vocally, he has a rough, guttural Gene Simmons style that certainly suits the music.  Although he's unlikely to be up for any vocalist of the year awards any time soon, with some of his singing veering into spoken word territory.  He also handles synthesizer and some guitar, as well as the expected drums.  Not forgetting that he wrote and produced the album as well.  It's true that not everything works but the brutally anti-social "Leave Me Alone" taps into that 1971 feeling of alienation and rage with "How Do You Bleed"  the album highlight which comes across as a mixture of WASP and Ministry.  Not a hybrid I ever expected to encounter!  "Dynasty Of Darkness" is also rather good, combining "God Of Thunder" by Kiss with, um, any other Gene Simmons sung Kiss track.

I'm not entirely sure that we need a drum solo.  That's ever, and not just as a feature of "Monsters In The Attic," one of the songs that doesn't really go anywhere, more of a repetitive beat than an actual song.  It's one of the failings of more industrialised metal that the songs are sometimes an afterthought, and there are a few here you won't listen to twice.  However, I did enjoy the experience, even if I did feel slightly grubby afterwards.  Fans of classic Alice Cooper would be well served in having a listen, even it bears more resemblance to solo Alice in his Brutal Planet phase than it does Killer.