This second edition of Warrior Soul liner notes is also dedicated to Mark Evans, Warriors Soul's drummer on Drugs, God & the New Republic, Salutations from the Ghetto Nation, and Chill Pill, who was killed in London in January of 2005.

See disc one of the Warrior Soul Tribute here.

Warrior Soul never had a time of their own. Even music critics draw a blank, though not so much in the UK, where the political aspects of Warrior Soul made a lasting impression on the rock press. With hard rock insiders, it's a different story. Michael Monroe, the lead singer of Hanoi Rocks (a band that is widely credited as a main influence on the hair bands of the '80s, and later Guns 'N Roses), told me a couple years ago that he considers Warrior Soul to be the best band since the '80s.

Small wonder, then, that I was unable to cram all the worthy Warrior Soul songs onto one greatest hits CD. So, for the hard core fans out there, the real old school mofos, we have Warrior Soul's Best of Volume II. Here you will find a few major omissions from the first set, as well as a broader range of songs that show a band striding across genres and styles.

Hopefully my writing on Warrior Soul will spark more online tributes to a band that never got its due - except on eBay, where rabid fans buy old tour shirts for $80 a pop. In a music world where selling out has become a status symbol and hits are manufactured from the top down, Warrior Soul has an alarming relevance.

I think about Warrior Soul a lot as I navigate the treacheries of commerce and cram creative work into the cracks of my life. Most days I catch a glimpse of Kory Clarke on my office wall. Under that picture, it says, "What would Kory do?" I promised Kory I would come through for him, so Kory, this one's for you - sorry it took so damn long.

(1)"Ass Kickin'" - One of the greatest hard rock songs of all time, “Ass Kickin'” is as advertised. Nothing fancy here, just Pete McClahan's bass surging out of the gate and three minutes of glory. The cornerstones of the Warrior Soul philosophy are all here: revolution is necessary, but we must live outrageously on our way there; the fight is not about reform but human freedom, and "The Man" might seem to have the power, but we have the secret weapon: ass-kickin' rock and roll. Leave it to Warrior Soul to write a three minute rocker with this verse as punchline: "it's a drag/all alone/locked in silence/stand your ground/fight the world in hard defiance/take a look in your heart/listen to the sky/the spirit that lives to fight, remember/will never die." Throw in Johnny Ricco's best solo ever, and take a ride into rock immortality.

(2) "We Cry Out" - Warrior Soul's first single, "We Cry Out" remains a pop riddle, a mystery direction Warrior Soul could have chased into a different career. The "children of a new generation" are still here raising a bit of clichéd hell, but the music has a poppier vibe. Kory has a dash of the Bruce Dickinson/Iron Maiden operatic thing going, something he toyed with on the first two albums before opting for a corrosive punk influence on the third record, Salutations from a Ghetto Nation. "We Cry Out" sports well-crafted vocal harmonies, a soaring chorus, and a Def Leppard-redux riff. It doesn't sound anything like the grinders the guys churned out later. The link is the political sensibility. Even when they did a poppier song, Warrior Soul had a sense of importance about them, mostly in a good way. They didn't want to write another song for the status quo.

(3) "Jump for Joy" - A wrecking ball from Drugs, God, and the New Republic, "Jump for Joy" begins with a massive tribal beat; Kory summons a war council to announce the end of life as we know it. Each time he sings "We're all dead," it sinks in a little further. Finally, spiteful resignation: he can't save us because we can't save ourselves. I always wonder how this song would have sounded on the Salutations album; something is lost in the production quality of the New Republic version. Maybe there's too much theater and not enough punk edge. "Jump for Joy" is still a triumph, but it remains a few tweaks away from a masterpiece.

(4) "Cargos of Doom" - As ominous as its title, "Cargos of Doom" is one of Warrior Soul's signature tracks. A wildly original mix of rage and jazzy slopes, "Cargoes of Doom" delivers lyrically and musically. Surreal images and chain saw vocals drive a song without rhetoric. Here is Warrior Soul's careening world: the underbelly of commerce, the likelihood of betrayal and false motives. The Chill Pill version is solid, but I prefer the Classics version, which is unrepentant.

(5) "Shine Like It" - This song doesn't really go anywhere till you hit the chorus, but what a chorus. Ricco outdoes himself with another brilliant solo. The end result is one of those album staples you used to live by back when records weren't shallow promises propped up by a couple of singles.

(6) "The Golden Shore" - Another keeper from Salutations from the Ghetto Nation, "The Golden Shore" is an unexpected tribute to love and devotion. In his finest vocal performance, Kory reminds us that vulnerability turns to boldness if you can be strong enough. Sometimes, love doesn't seem worth the risk. We retreat from bold stances because we don't want to be disappointed. "The Golden Shore" reminds that there is greatness in the brazen expression of longing. When I want to retreat from love's front lines, this is the song that brings me back. There was no craven attempt to turn "The Golden Shore" into a "hit power ballad"; it is what it is. When Kory cries "Tell me what this life is for!", it's a recognition that love isn't going to spare us. But for this moment, it is enough.

(7) "Blown" - "Blown" is bursting with outrage about things that are probably worse today than they were at the time. What we're left with is one of Warrior Soul's real grinds, a mean mother of a riff that pounds away at illegitimate authority with the same relentlessness that it usually pounds at us. I have slight preference for the Classics version, due to a nasty bridge where we hit the riff at a deafening volume.

(8) "All That Glitters (live)" - The depravity of the Space Age Playboys album led to a further extreme after Warrior Soul disbanded. Kory's next band, the Space Age Playboys, picked up where Warrior Soul's last album left off, but with an even stronger commitment to debauchery and an even greater sense of alienation from the causes Warrior Soul once espoused. There is something tragic about the party-till-dawn ethos of The Space Age Playboys. If Warrior Soul had incited the masses instead of the lunatic fringe, Space Age Playboys never would have happened. Thus Space Age Playboys was borne of the messed-up world that is, a world where decadence tranquilizes lost dreams. Space Age Playboys didn't last for long - two hard-to-find studio albums and a live album form the epitaph. It's probably a good thing they didn't last; they represent an existential edge most rock stars don't come back from. But The Space Age Playboys are not a sad footnote; these guys could rock and roll! My faves come at the end of the Live in London release. "All that Glitters" has a one-more-fix intensity. The guys play loose while holding down the beat, and the riff goes on and on.

(9) "Rock n Roll Limo (live)" - The cartoon dystopia of the Space Age Playboys reached its peak with "Rock n Roll Limo," a reckless tribute to rock stardom. I think this was supposed to be a satire but it doesn't sound satirical. The tension between stardom and revolution that made Warrior Soul so compelling is all but abandoned here, as we wind through the Hollywood hills with hair-sprayed groupies and way too much to inhale. The song is riveting and offers no apology. If Kory had written a song about the sad end of Warrior Soul, it wouldn't have been nearly as devastating as this. Once Kory got Space Age Playboys out of his system, he took a step back from front lines of rock and roll. He left behind not one, but two great bands, and since there is a connection between them musically and philosophically, it makes sense to include these two tracks here.

(10) "Soft" - "Soft" is an experimental little ditty from Chill Pill. I'm not sure I would go so far as to call it one of Warrior Soul's best songs, but the change of pace was needed here. "Soft" was one of the songs on the avant-garde Chill Pill that really worked. Warrior Soul always had a stoner-jam-band in them. They kept it in check, but "Soft" hints at what Warrior Soul might have done with a Emerson Lake and Palmer type of double album where every band member got one side to play with.

(11) "Generation Graveyard" - This tune is buried at the end of Warrior Soul's last studio release, Space Age Playboys. I didn't give it a hard listen till I saw it on Lars Ulrich's playlist and wondered why he would be listening to that song when there are seven or eight others on the album that are better. A ball of disciplined aggression, I like "Generation Graveyard" better when it's separated from the rest of the Playboys tracks, bringing a bit of the binge-and-purge to this mix.

(12) "Shock Um Down" - Like all the great ones, Warrior Soul was not afraid to throw in a few tossers. By tosser, we're not talking about bad songs, but songs that were tossed from a jam session to posterity. Studios can muzzle rock and roll. One of the best antidotes is a song like "Shock Um Down," spontaneity therapy for a band that sometimes got bogged down in its message. Far from the best Warrior Soul song, "Shock Um Down" still keeps the windows down and the foot on the accelerator.

(13) "If You Think You're Bad" - This swig comes from Odds 'N Ends, one more attitude song from a band with plenty. "If You Think You're Bad" is just a badder-than-thou session on a spiked riff, but with a few Warrior Soul twists. As Kory puts it, "You're into politics but I don't dig your position." Leave it to Warrior Soul to add political considerations to their put downs.

(14) "Drugs, God and the New Republic" - The title track from the second Warrior Soul album, "Drugs" is one of those songs you don't rattle off when you're listing your favorite Warrior Soul songs, but it holds up well. It is the definitive "album staple," capturing Warrior Soul's attack on the hypocrisy culture which says "no" to drugs but can't root out the drug trade from its cozy place in the U.S. economy.

(15) "Mars" - "Mars" is over before it begins, a two minute musing from Chill Pill that fits the purpose of this mix and underlines the importance of experimental tracks. Chill Pill isn't the most cohesive Warrior Soul album, but its quirkiness remains a part of its charm.

(16) "Fallen" - One of the haunting bass lines in the Warrior Soul catalog, "Fallen" is a guided tour through the dead and the living dead, with Kory pointing out the corpses as they fall. A six minute purge, "Fallen" takes its time with verses that revel in the condemnation of culture without soul, contrasted with one of those vintage Warrior Soul choruses.

(17) "The Wasteland" - The only song I included on both mixes, this version is the original from Drugs, God, and the New Republic. Most days, I like the one on Classics better; it's a more expansive version that drills the riff home. But the original version has merit also; it's more of a speedster, out of the gate and no looking back.

JR's wrap up: so ends the "best of Warrior Soul" liner notes. If you missed out on part one, you can check that out here. I'm sure the die-hards will have questions about tracks I left off. I ignored some of the video singles, and there were tough calls on the second mix especially. I thought about including "I Love You," but it covers pretty much the same territory as "Shock 'Um Down," so you can swap those around if you like. "In Conclusion" was one of the more significant exclusions, but you get some of the same elements in "Fallen." Since all Warrior Soul albums are worth owning, there's no way you're going to get it right. "Lullabye" almost cracked the second mix. The one song that has a real asterisk next to it is "Raised on Riots." "Raised on Riots" appeared on the Odds n’ Ends rarities CD. With some studio knob-twisting and a bit more studio polish, this could have been one of the greatest Warrior Soul tracks. But it stalls out from the limitations of the four track. As Kory explains on the Odds n’ Ends liner notes, "Raised on Riots" was part of a batch of "commercial" hard rock tunes that were recorded around the same time as the more experimental tracks that ended up as Chill Pill. In essence, Warrior Soul wanted to give Geffen a hard-to-sell record (Chill Pill) as a parting fuck you, and then use a bunch of catchy tunes to land a new major label deal. "Raised on Riots" was part of a batch of four track demos for that new record deal that never came, just another in a line of "almosts" that defined Warrior Soul's career, at least in financial terms. The raw potential of "Raised on Riots" shines through, but not enough to make the cut of my liner notes. The point of this mix was not to be definitive, but to delve further into the music of Warrior Soul than we have seen online. Hopefully this work will spark others to do the same, and between us, we can create a tribute to Warrior Soul that is worthy of their stature.
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