• AllMyVinyl #149
• Band: Smith/Kotzen
• Album Title: Black Light / White Noise
• Release Date: 4 Apr 2025
• Date “purchased”: 16 Apr 2025
• Location “purchased”: Trade – see story below
• Color of vinyl: black
• Number of discs: 1
• Links: [ Wikipedia | Discogs | Band Website | Complete album on Youtube ]

This one is an odd one.  Normally in this series I write about my history with an album, but there’s no real history here since this album came out in the spring of 2025.  So there’s no backstory to this.  In fact, I didn’t even BUY this one.  How I came across owning it is an interesting story.  Well to me I suppose.  :)

Couple of years back ZZ Top’s Billy Gibbons put out a solo album called “Hardware”.   It came out about a year after I bought my modern record player, so I was looking for titles to get.  Love me some ZZ Top, so I bought a copy of that.  Was straight from the label, too.  However, the copy I got from them was warped pretty badly, so I contacted their customer support, and they sent me a replacement, except when they sent me a replacement, they sent TWO replacements.  Nothing different, just two of them.  I didn’t need three copies of the album, so I ditched the really bad/warped copy and opened one of the replacements.  The second replacement just existed in my record collection unopened.

Until a friend of mine who bought the Smith/Kotzen album this page is about was talking to me about it and mentioned the EXACT same thing happened to him – he ended up with a spare, unopened copy of the SK album, so the two of us decided to trade our spare copies for the other as he didn’t have the Gibbons album, and I didn’t have the SK album.  Worked out great in the end!

Thing is by this point I had started this vinyl series, and decided to not open the album until I got to it in the series, which is today.  I’ve done about 150 of these now and some details are starting to blur – I THINK this is the first NEW (and new to me) album that I’ve opened from original shrink wrap and played it for my page.  if that happened before, I’ve forgotten.  Oh well.  :)

When I did open it, I was surprised to see that it contained an autograph card from both S & K.  That was a surprise, I had no idea it was in there.  There’s a picture of it below.  It’s a smaller card – not like a full size for the inside of the vinyl sleeve or anything.  But it was still a very pleasant surprise.

The band on here is nearly all Adrian Smith & Ritchie Kotzen.   Smith is credited with vocals and guitar.  Kotzen is credited with vocals, guitar, bass, & drums.  Now it’s not ALL Kotzen.  There’s a two other drummers credited on three songs, and another bassist credited on five, but Richie Kotzen does have a huge part in the playing of this.  The album is also credited as being recorded at “The House” in Los Angeles, and was engineered by Richie – makes me wonder if the entire thing was recorded at his house.  :)

Adrian Smith of course is known from his decades in Iron Maiden, so that’s the biggest draw for me on this album.  I’m not expecting an Iron Maiden album at all, but some of the guitar work should some familiar as someone who’s been a Maiden fan since 1982.

I don’t have any built up notions for this – it’s a total blank canvas, so my reactions below will be “first thoughts” for sure, not someone who has had a few decades to build up things about the songs on an album.

Muddy Water – It’s funny I say that about Maiden above, because the absolute FIRST sound on the album is one that really to my ears sounds like something Maiden would do.  It’s just an intro before the meat of the song, but the Maiden draw is there right from the start.  The main riff here is a good chunky one.  You also know sometimes when you’re hearing a new guitar riff, you can kind of predict where it’s going to when listening?  That’s NOT what happened here.  It’s a good riff for sure, but one that wasn’t predictable, so I enjoyed that.   The vocals are just OK, but the main draw here for me is the riffing, I quite liked what they were doing here.  Good start to the album.   Usually when I’m into riffing in a song, I find the solo a crescendo of sorts – but this time I found the riffing in the verses and chorus more interesting than the solo.  Not that it was bad or anything – it wasn’t, but I was into the main riff here a lot.

White Noise – The vocal delivery here reminds me a bit of what we’d get out of Bad Company.  It’s for me the bigger hook here than the guitar work, so it’s the polar opposite for me personally to the first song.  I did really dig the guitar solo though.  Really great blues-y sound in the solo area.  In fact it’s a longer solo than most songs of this length.   “Can you hear me through the white noise?” – that’s the lone of lyric that gets repeated a lot, and it’s a small thing, but I like the aural landscape you hear when that’s being delivered.  Good vocal delivery for me.  Although I have a feeling this is a bullet point that I’m gonna focus in on more than others would.

Black Light – It’s well known I like a good drum into to a song, and this one has one.  Not terribly long, but a good drum beat is essential, and this one has a good one.  It’s a faster paced song than the other two, and reminds me a bit of some the good blues based stuff we’d hear on the two Snakecharmer albums.  Good drum beat, fast paced, and some good vocal hooks.  Great track.  In fact just listening to it I forgot to write about it and just took the song in.  I think I’ll just let it go at that.  Really enjoyed this one, at a loss to say exactly why beyond what I’ve already said.  :)

Darkside – This is a slower more blues rock sounding track.  There’s no distinct big riff in here, it’s hard blues rock at its core, and doesn’t deviate from that.  It appears that both Smith & Kotzen are singing together here, which hasn’t happened to this point.  Song is just there for me.  Don’t dislike it, but it didn’t move the meter a lot.

Life Unchained – This one has a meandering guitar sound for its riff, but the song seems more bass driven.  At first I thought there might have been keys on this song, but there’s no keyboards credited anywhere on this album, probably just a creative use of the bass guitar.  However all that changes right around the time the lyrics get started.  The main guitar riff sounds like something that Malcolm Young of AC/DC would have bene proud of.  It’s’ more than just that, but after starting off slow, the main part of the song picks up speed.  Lyrically it appears to be about one’s mental state. “I had a bad day, about to lose my mind” is typical of the lyrics here.  Given the faster pace of the music, it makes the thing feel a bit frenetic.  I like the guitar solo.  While it doesn’t sound like any one that I’m familiar with, but it does harken back to an era from when I was younger and would hear similar guitar solos.  Again, I don’t think they’re stealing anything, but the solo here reminds me of a different era of hard rock music than the 2020’s.   Liked this track.

Blindsided – This starts off with what I’ve referred to a few times as a “Fat bottom end” beat.  It’s a heavier bass sound than most of the songs on this album to this point.  Couple with the fast pace of the tune as well, and it’s another that caught my ear on first listen.  The only thing I’d change would be to make the entire song have that heavy sound through the whole thing.  Would be a great Sabbath like slice of sludge if they did that.  As it is, it’s a great tune accented well by the heavy bass stuff we do get.  Actually found myself annoyed when the song was over, wanted more of what I was hearing.

Wraith – This song kind of reminds me of a Maiden idea as well.  At least at the start.  I’ve done my best to avoid Maiden comparisons, but when one of Maiden’s guitarists is on this album, it’s gonna pop up in a few places.  The chorus was pretty catchy.  I don’t have a ton to say here because I kept thinking “What would this sound like if Bruce Dickinson was singing?”  That’s not really fair to the song, it’s my own mind getting in the way.  Did enjoy the guitar solo a bunch.

Heavy Weather – This one seems to have the vocals mixed a little higher than usual – they seem the focus more than the instruments.  Musically this isn’t as interesting riff wise than some of the others.  Bit of an “album track” feel to it.  In fact the most interesting thing to me is some of the vocal delivery.  I did like the ending of the song.  Not for a snarky reason like “it’s over”, but I thought it ended well musically.

Outlaw – The guitar riffing here can be described as “smooth”.   It’s not as harsh or as in your face, it just flows from part to part of the song in a different way than most of the music on this album.  That also extends to the vocals, as in the chorus, it’s a nice flow from part of the song to another.  A good song to just listen to.  It’s the kind of track I can easily imagine myself cracking a beer (too early in the day for that as I write this) and enjoying the track.  I know these remarks don’t speak a lot to the actual music as such.  But sometimes a song isn’t about critical breakdown, it’s about your response to it, and I just wanted to sit here and go “OK, I like that”.  Great “flow” and “feel” song.

Beyond the Pale – The last song on the album is the longest (at 7:24).  A full two minutes longer than the next longest (at 5:18).   Definitely a slower track.  Perhaps the slowest on the album.  Even the chorus is slower than usual.  It’s got some Zeppelin-esque parts in the middle.  At first I thought it reminded me of a slower Sabbath track called “The Eternal Idol”, but it didn’t go there.  The music doesn’t vary much on this – it’s a slower paced less in your face track than a lot of the songs on this album.  There’s some orchestration here, a different sound for sure.  I definitely prefer faster paced stuff, but I enjoyed this just the same.  It’s not quite “power ballad” level, but it shares some things with that type of song.  Finding it hard to quantify this one as you can probably see – my thoughts are all over the place.   It does end well, still slow, kind of “sailing into the sunset” feel to the way the song and the album overall ends.

A goofy story I didn’t want to put in the song part.  When I was looking at the list of songs, I saw the last two being “Outlaw” and “Beyond the Pale”.  For some reason it made me think of the Springsteen song “Outlaw Pete”, which is weird as these two songs don’t sound anything like that, and this album has a song named “Pale” and not “Pete”.  It doesn’t MEAN anything, but I wanted to put it out there.

I know the pair have another album – this one was their second.  I should go check that one out too.  Rolling back around to the trade I made for this album, it’s always cool when something like that happens.  Ended up with a good album that I got legally but didn’t pay for.  That’s always a bonus.  Some good stuff here.  As I said before, while I wasn’t expecting Iron Maiden I did hear a few things that reminded me of them, which was kind of inevitable given who is playing here.   Some good surprises on here for sure.

Will also be curious to see if there’s a third from the duo.