The last Lizzy Borden effort, Deal With the Devil, was a Dad, Sam Radley and Jack Wayne album — it essentially came out of nowhere and kicked a serious amount of ass.

Borden  sounded like a raging maniac, ably assisted by a band in great form and it was hard to believe the guy had spent the latter half of the 80s putting out some milddling, vaguely threatening hair metal.

 He's returned seven years later with the very wimpily named Appointment With Death which signals quite a transformation — from one of Satan's favoured minions to an also-ran waiting to hear from the Grim Reaper.
 
Superficially speaking Appointment is a great follow-up. It's got some punchy memorable riffs (epsecially on Somethin's Crawlin' in spite of the fact that it directly rips off Symphony of Destruction), and stellar lead guitars. There's a huge laundry list of guitarists on this album and all of them do a tremendous job — we are talking about George Lynch (Lynch Mob, Dokken) and Dave Meniketti (Y&T) here. We could also talk about Corey whatsit from Trivium but I don't want to.

In spite of face melting leads from the guest artists, Appointment is let down severely by  Borden himself. The last seven years have not been kind to his voice at all. He squawks  like an aggrieved housewife from a 1960s sitcom (think Lucille Ball throwing a tantrum) and goes offkey on lines that even Uli Roth would be able to pull off with ease. It's not so much a question of being unable to work within limitations of his voice either — I truly believe Borden's reached a stage where he can't hold a tune to save his life.

I can reccomend this only to subscribers of the 'waiting for the solo' school of music listening. I'd daresay some of the leads are even good enough to endure the rest of this album to get to. But mostly, don't bother with this at all. 5 Thadiyans for the leads. -7 Thadiyans for Borden's absolute lack of talent as a vocalist.