Read my review of Wicked Wisdom's self titled debut album

It seems these days, the trendiest thing a movie star can do I release a music album.  Whether it’s Lindsay Lohan with Pop music, Russell Crowe’s singer-songwriter croning (singin’ songs, fightin’ chumps, and sailin’ round the world), or Hilary Duffs, er, more pop music.

However, in the face of the rash of celebrity pop music which has successfully crawled it’s way up the radio airwaves and into the ears of every person on the face of the Earth, one movie star dares to be different.  Yes, one movie star, dares to be the front-woman for a metal band.  Not only being in the metal band, but this movie star doesn’t even smear her celebrity name and face all over the album, allowing the band to actually be though of as A BAND and not just a one person show, (it’s a neat idea isn’t it? Hint hint other celebrities).

It’s just too bad the band sucks.

So, in case you haven’t heard yet, the lead singer for the metal band “Wicked Wisdom” is Jada Koren (aka Jada Pinket-Smith).  The band is a full fledged, honest to goodness metal band that writes their own songs and performs their own instruments.  Again, the only problem is that the music sucks. 

With the exception of the drummer, the musicianship on this album is simplistic at best.  And not simplistic in a good way.  Rammstein has simplistic riffs and musicianship, but it’s to a purpose, and it works very well with Rammstein’s music.  The simplicity of the music on Wicked Wisdom doesn’t come off so much as being on purpose, but more just because this is all they could come up with.  Most songs consist of a small amount of progressing higher chords that are played over and over to an ad nauseum.  The vocals mostly just follow the chords, instead of creating their own melodies.  Again, this works with Rammstein, doesn’t work with Wicked Wisdom though.

Speaking of the vocals, they aren’t great.  Jada Koren, sounds like she could potentially have a very nice metal singing voice, but she doesn’t use it.  She mostly just spits and shouts and follows along the chords.  This kind of singing works with some bands, but it doesn’t with the music that is behind the lyrics.  With the kind of musicianship that is currently being supplied behind the vocals, the vocals should soar and be used as a weapon, but instead they just spit and hiss and just sound un-talented.  Which is too bad, because I think Jada Koren could be a potentially great singer, if she just used her voice instead of shouted.

The lyrics are probably the biggest sore on the Wicked Wisdom album.  They’re all very melodramatic songs about bleeding and pain and being angry and hating people and being hated by people.  The only problem is there very little poetry in the lyrics, and they just end up sounding kind of emo.  It’s also kind of hard to find lyrics to the song “Something Inside of Me” (a song about how angry the singer is) seriously when we all know just what the singers current life situation is.  Being a famous movie star with millions of dollars, a loveable charismatic husband, and two charming children, doesn’t make for me to really buy into how much pain you’re in.

This isn’t to say that she couldn’t write about pain and anger, she just needs to be more honest about where it’s coming from, and not just sing about free floating hostility which is mostly what the song lyrics are.

The band is not all bad though.  They have a very good drummer.  I also honestly believe that the band has a lot of potential.  They currently just seemed confused and don’t know what they’re trying to achieve with their music.  They try to use a vast amount of influences and incorporate everything into their music, but they just end up getting jumbled and not performing any influence particularly well.

Some points do have to be given to Jada Koren for going down the heavy metal path, when most celebrities go the pop music route.  She should also be given credit for going metal instead of hip-hop as most people would expect, as she is married to a famous rapper.  However, some points are taken away from the band for having toured with Brittany Spears.

So in end, Wicked Wisdom kind of suck… but maybe they’ll be better in the future.

-Awesome McCrunchFist

Here’s the music videos for their song “Something Inside of Me” and “Bleed All Over Me” as posted on YouTube:

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