This came out in 2002 – or at least that’s when I got it. Here’s what I said about it back then (with some minor editing):
“I believe that rock is dead,” proclaims Makers frontman Michael Machine on Strangest Paradise. To which you can only respond: Who’s he trying to kid?
If anything, these leather-clad garage-glammers from Seattle are one of the few bands keeping real rock alive. And by real rock, I mean the spaced-out, drugged-out sounds of ’70s stars like David Bowie, The Rolling Stones and Blue Öyster Cult. That’s what fuelled their last disc, 2000’s stunning concept album Rock Star God — and it’s what gooses this similarly themed (and similarly ambitious) encore. Weaving together theatrical, decadent tracks about sex (Wide Wide World of Girls), stardom (Calling Elvis, John and Jesus), alienation (Hard to be Human) and especially death (Death and the Mad Heroine, Addicted to Dying, Suicide Blues), The Makers once again craft a magnificently malevolent magnum opus of raging egos, swaggering power, grand designs, smeared mascara, bad drugs and broken dreams. And if that ain’t what rock ’n’ roll is all about, I don’t know what is.
