Felony-Helltown Hotel

Eonian
2009

I admit that I never heard of Felony before a few months ago, but there are couple pages in the booklet of this collection that tells their tale. They formed back in 1989 in Indianapolis and knocked an EP a year later. Some problems arose and the band changed members and got back to recording a few years later. The songs from the EP open this disc and they are very much influenced by Theater of Pain era Motley Crue. There is a slight groove to some of the songs, but quite honestly you have probably a dozen bands that sound like this. Still it's above average as they try hard to make it work. The other ten tracks were recorded in 1993 and 1994. For these songs there is a definite shift away from the old hair metal as they attempt to put more of a raw sound to their songs. Quite honestly it's hit and miss with some songs benefiting from the heaviness while others have the band sounding awkward. Felony benefit from not being too watered down and the rhythm section isn't bad, but it's easy to say why they never got very far. This is very typical run of the mill hard rock for the time and they may have been a year or two behind with what they were trying to create on these songs. Just an okay band, but Eonian records does another fine job of putting out a rarity and the packaging helps.