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JIZZY PEARL’S LOVE/HATE
Punk Rock Fiesta!

Kenyon (2025)
Rating: 8.5/10

And here it is again, that vocal which sent shivers down my spine and injected booze in my veins when I first heard Love/Hate with their debut album Blackout In The Red Room.

During the late 80s and early 90s bands like this should have been massive, and yet in spite of a reasonable amount of success, mostly on the European circuits, they never got the recognition they deserved. Love/Hate, certainly with their albums Blackout In The Red Room (1990) and Wasted In America (1992), should have been competing with Guns N’ Roses; their sound was more versatile than Axl Rose and co. as Jizzy Pearl (vocals), Jon E. Love (guitar), Skid Rose (bass) and Joey Gold (drums) kicked out a myriad of colourful jams. Some were sleazy, some were funky, others punky, but overall they blew me away.

Sadly, like a lot of bands – some cool, some not so – Love/Hate fragmented, resulting in albums that didn’t quite hit the dizzy or Jizzy heights of previous underrated classics. Jizzy Pearl became somewhat of a substitute musician, filling in as lead vocalist – albeit briefly – for popular bands such as Ratt, Quiet Riot and L.A. Guns. The singer also put out four solo albums before 2022 saw the return – sort of – of Love/Hate, with Jizzy at the helm for Hell, CA.

Continuing to rip rock n’ roll a new one, Jizzy again proves there’s still life after the early 90s as ‘You’re Gonna Burn’ comes stomping in with a simple yet effective riff provided by Darren Housholder. The attitude is very much punk rock, the music the same fiery, swaggering sleaze strut that graced Blackout In The Red Room an incredible 35 years ago.

This isn’t just a one-off cut to hook you up then let you down, the album is awash with beefy, ballsy rock n’ roll compositions which drip with sweat and charisma while being bolstered by Christian Kimmett’s (Warrior Soul) burly bass and Dave Moreno’s volatile beats.

‘Over The Edge’ is a colossal riff monster; a traipsing monolith that spits venom before the chorus glides emphatically to Jizzy’s scowls, “Your life is falling over the edge, and now your mind is going over the edge”. It’s immediately infectious, keeping the same sort of pace as the L.A. Guns classic track of the same title.

The juggernaut riffs continue to churn with ‘I’ll Be Your Shadow’. “She’ll tell me lies, yeah I’ve been lied to… look in my eyes, and I’ll remind you,” barks Jizzy. It’s bombastic rock music but there’s also room for colourful variations and blooms of wistful colour, particularly with the brilliance of ‘Can’t Be Wrong’ with its breezy acoustic backing. It’s here that Pearl shows the talent of depth we’ve all come to adore but it doesn’t end there. There’s the punky, trashy anger of ‘Didya Think You Could Fall In Love?’, the equally potent and raucous ‘The Wrath Of Love’ and ‘Eye For An Eye’ and closing sleazebomb ‘Time To Take Your Pill’. All this quality is rammed into under half-an-hour and magically sewn together by Housholder’s shredding.

The fact that most of these songs wouldn’t seem out of place on those early Love/Hate albums is testament to just how good Pearl and company are. Jizzy is now in his late 60s and sounds exactly how he did in 1990… the power, the grit, the passion, the smoke, the fire. This rocks.

Neil Arnold

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