Artist: Kottak 
   Title: Therupy
   Label: Escapi Music

James Kottak may be a name that most people associate with Kingdom Come and now the Scorpions, but Kottak is much more than just a drummer.  He branched out to guitar back in 1994 when he hooked up with Tommy Lee’s sister Athena who also plays drums, these two enlisted Dave Whiston for lead guitar duties and bassist Rev Jones to complete the line up.  The band were named Krunk at this time in their history.

When Kottak got the call to join the Scorpions back in 1996 he kept the Krunk project together between Scorpions tours and released the bands debut back in 2000.  However, due to the workload of both bands and the never ending change in musical conceptions Kottak put Krunk on the back boiler for a while and continued his work with the Scorpions, but in 2005 Kottak was ready to give the band another go under the Kottak moniker.

With this new album Kottak returns to his punk roots.  The album opens up with ‘Money Changes Everything’, a straight shooting rock song that mixes the best of new age punk with good old rock n roll.  A great song to get the album started.

Things slow down just a touch with ‘Ripped’, another great song that is less punk and more hard rock.  The same can be said about ‘Song That Wont Go Away’, only this is a little more up-tempo than ‘Ripped’ and features some great riffs from Whiston.

The album continues with the ‘Do You Want To Play’, a really addictive track that will have you bouncing along as soon as you hear it.  The catchy chorus is just addictive and will have you singing it from the off.  Things slow down again with the endearing tones of ‘Miss You’, another track with Whiston’s hot guitar licks a prominent feature of the track.

The next two tracks ‘Pink Soft’ and ‘Funday’ are both almost semi acoustic in their sound and pave the way for the punk ‘n’ roll that is ‘Life Support’, a much more up-tempo track that is very Blink 182 meets The Ramones.

That acoustic feel returns again with the totally un-PC ‘High (In My Little Room)’.  A song that tells of woes of drugs, a message to all with this one.  Things pick up a little with ‘Generation X’ before things get a little funky with ‘Anti’, as Anthena takes up the mike for this one this song reminds me of something Green Jelly would do.

The surprise package of the album has to be excellent cover of the Scorpions ‘Holiday’, which is a great version and really rocks good style.  I can see this being a real show stopper live and it rounds off a great album, which when I put it on, always makes me smile.  This is as unpretentious as they come.

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