Jimmy P. Brown has a long career behind him as a singer and guitarist in the metal band Deliverance, but on Back from Mars – the first project from his new band Jupiter VI – he sings to an altogether different tune. The music is a hotchpotch of a great number of influences, primarily 70s and 80s style classic rock, glam and space rock, and is an attempt at recreating or emulating the sound of such artists as The Strokes, The Killers and David Bowie.

In my opinion, the end result is less than satisfactory. There are a number of passable or even good tracks on the album such as “Mimes Hill”, “Passions” and “All Day and All of the Night” (a Kinks cover) which succeed in sounding as if they could have come straight off an album from the late 70s.

However, there are just as many lows among the 11 tracks which, as a whole, come across as an oddly mismatched collection of songs that range from punk and ska over metal to space rock. Variation certainly can be a good thing, but in this case it only serves to convey an impression of an album that is too schizophrenic to properly please anyone.

The thing that I find the most annoying with Jupiter VI and Back from Mars is the fact that these are skilled musicians, but they have too many ideas for their own good. And given that the best tracks are the ones on which Jimmy genuinely sounds like a cross between David Bowie and Bryan Ferry the question is: Why not simply put on “Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars” and enjoy the real thing instead?