ALIENS

"Aliens" is regarded as the album HORSLIPS pretty much abandoned the Celtic rock for just rock, with a West Coast influence. The reason for that was this album was a concept album about Irish immigration to America in the 1840s during the potato famine in dreams of making it big in America, only to end up disappointed. This change in style was in hope the band would break with an American audience. With songs like "The Wrath of the Rain" and "Sure the Boy Was Green", you can see an absence of the Celtic style, no concertinas or uileann pipes like you might get with "The Tain". There is no doubt the best song on this album is "Speed the Plough". "Come Summer" shows the folk-influence, with Jim Lockhart giving us some nice flutework. The second half of the album regards the Irish finally making it to America only to find out the realities that life wasn't going to be as easy as they thought, like on "A Lifetime to Pay". To be fair, this album isn't bad at all, and it could have been a lot worse. Good stuff, actually.