On his first two albums, Alex Williams delivered bracingly hard-edged honky-tonk and country-rock with attitude and heart. And his original songs – especially on 2022’s Waging Peace, where he unflinchingly faced up to his demons — revealed him to be a fresh new voice. It was hard not to view him as a rare legitimate heir to the Outlaw Country mantle.
So what has Williams decided to do for his next act? On Space Brain, he reinterprets songs by 1980s metal bands – the music he says he grew up with in Indiana. And if you think he can’t make this audacious maneuver work, well, in the words of the Judas Priest song he covers here, “You Got Another Thing Coming.” He makes these songs his own in line with his earlier work.
