VARIOUS – SIN-ATRA
Run for the hills all fans of Ol’ Blue Eyes. Bury your head in shame metal heads. I don’t care which side of the fence you sit on – or if you actually fit into both camps (anything is possible in this world) – nothing can excuse this wholesale slaughter of twelve Frank Sinatra classics by a motley crew of metal heads in the name of…well hopefully money, because anything else would be too tragic to contemplate. Put together by guitarist Bob Kulick (a serail killer who used the same MO on The Beatles and a bunch of harmless Christmas songs) and using a who’s who of has-been metal vocalists – Jani Lane, Glenn Hughes, Dee Snider, Geoff Tate, Eric Martin etc. – Sin-Atra commits every metal crime in the book. Taking well loved tunes like New York, New York, I’ve Got You Under My Skin, Strangers in the Night and Fly Me to the Moon and crushing nuance and melody under metal bombast and ham-fisted arrangements, cliched solos and tragic stadium histrionics. Dee Snider’s It Was A Very Good Year offers the only glimmer of hope, with the addition of a string arrangement giving it a decidedly James Bond feel, but beyond that… An album whose highest expectations would have been as novelty value falls so awfully, awfully far short.
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