Though former Runaways guitarist Lita Ford has been absent from the recording industry since 1997, she hasn't exactly been idle. After releasing Kiss Me Deadly, her final album after a string of them in the '80s and '90s, the music scene -- and the industry with it -- changed, and alternative ruled the airwaves. Ford got married to Jim Gillette, former vocalist with hair metal rockers Nitro, and started a family. In addition, she relocated to the Caribbean. Wicked Wonderland is uncharacteristic of the pop-metal she released a decade ago. It's an in-your-face metal record, but ultimately it's a very studied and calculated 21st century pop-metal record. It's an album with explicit sexual content, examining S&M, bondage, power exchanges, and all manner of kink and crave in lyrics, words, and sleeve images. Ford wrote all of these songs with her co-producers Greg Hampton and Gillette. Gillette is also either a duet partner or backing vocalist on every track here. Hampton handles bass, keyboard, and other sonic duties, and there are a pair of drummers who alternate in Chris Collier and Stet Howland. The album's first single (and longest track), "Bed," was released exclusively to Stockroom.com, one of the leading suppliers of S&M and bondage gear on the internet. Ford claims that she and her husband have carved out a path to a happy family life, and it does seem that they detail it on this recording. Musically, while Wicked Wonderland is harder, edgier, darker, and more visceral than anything she's released in the past, this is still a very pop-oriented heavy music recording. The songs have hooks as well as blazing guitars and triple-time drumbeats, and they're saturated in keyboards and samplers. Metal has morphed and changed so radically in the last decade, this record sounds more like a late White Zombie tribute album than it does a contemporary metal recording. Check out the hooks in tracks like "Indulge," or the post-'80s metallic musical architecture of "Scream 4 Me," or even the industrial keyboard sounds combined with growling death metal vocals, and Ford's own almost-nostalgic balladic style, all of which make for something that feels not quite of the moment and something not quite dated, either. It also provides a link, however thinly disguised, of the persona she displayed on her earlier recordings. With the proper marketing strategy it will get some play and push in certain quarters of the music world, and perhaps in some markets not even normally associated with music.
ALL HAIL THE QUEEN!LITA FORD & JACK BLACK STAR IN VIDE0 GAME BRUTAL LEGENDAlready known as the Queen of Heavy Metal, Lita is adding another royal crown to her repertoire as she voices the role of the queen in the forthcoming action-adventure video game, Brütal Legend, out Oct. 13 via Double Fine Productions and Electronic Arts.Lita joins an impressive list of contributors, such as actors Jack B..
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LITA FORD GETS WICKED WITH QUEENSRYCHE THIS FALLNationwide Delta Airlines and Movie Theater Promotions Slated for Wicked Wonderland The Queen of Heavy Metal, Lita, has teamed up with Queensryche for a fall tour that can only be described as a metal fan's ultimate musical fantasy. Instead of just hitting the road with Geoff Tate and the gang, Queensryche will also be joining Lita onstage for he...
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Whoever said absence makes the heart grow fonder must've been thinking about the relationship between Lita Ford and rock 'n' roll. The hard rock queen stepped away from her remarkable musical career back in the 1990s to devote herself to family and the surroundings of real life on a surreal Caribbean island, but with the call of the sonic wild getting louder and louder, she made the decisio...
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LITA FORD & FAMILY STAR IN THE GILLETTES: FAMILY BUSINESS COMIC BOOK 14-Year-Old Comic Writer Jake Tinsley Pens the Book Lita has taken her family into the recording studio, on the road around the globe, and now will capture her clan manga-style on the pages of their first comic book, The Gillettes: Family Business, due this November. "We always wanted to do a comic book," says the Queen o...
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LITA FORD GETS NAUGHTY ON WICKED WONDERLAND, TITILLATING ALBUM ART REFLECTED ON MYSPACE PAGE AND VINYL/PICTURE DISC VERSIONS Remember the good old days, when you'd rush home from buying vinyl at your nearest record shop, put the platter on your turntable, and study the album cover and its contents as you listened? With those days seemingly gone with the "download revolution" in full swing, Li...
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THE QUEEN IS BACK! Hard Rock Legend Lita Ford Wins Metal Radio Over With "Crave" Metal radio welcomed Lita back to the airwaves with open arms as her latest hard rock anthem, "Crave," became this week's second most added song at metal radio in America. "It feels great to be back doing what I love," says Lita. "The response to the new material on the road has been amazing and now to have radio ...
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Metal radio welcomed Lita Ford back to the airwaves with open arms as her latest hard rock anthem, "Crave," became this week's second most added song at metal radio in America."It feels great to be back doing what I love," says Lita. "The response to the new material on the road has been amazing and now to have radio embrace it just proves that hard rock can never die.""Crave" is a new bump-an...
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Pioneering hard rock queen Lita Ford returns to action this fall with Wicked Wonderland, a disc brimming with loud and lusty new tunes -- songs that might make listeners feel as breathless and dizzy as Alice after a trip down the rabbit hole. But rest assured, you'll never hear anything like this at a tea party! "Everybody has their own Wicked Wonderland," says Lita. "It's a place where you ca...
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Lita Ford is in the midst of her studio comeback with a fiery new album titled Wicked Wonderland. This fall she’s hitting the road with Queensryche, so it’s needless to say that Lita is one busy rock star. We’ll be chatting with Lita just a few short days, but before we do that, we want [...]
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| Title | Lyrics | Buy |
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| 1 Crave |
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| 2 Piece (Hell Yeah) |
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| 3 Patriotic Sob |
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| 4 Scream for Me |
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| 5 Inside |
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| 6 Wicked Wonderland |
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| 7 Indulge |
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| 8 Love |
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| 9 Betrayal |
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| 10 Sacred |
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| 11 Truth |
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| 12 Everything |
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| 13 Bed |
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| 14 Garden [*] |
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| 15 Push [*] |
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 "Wicked Wonderland")
