Like a handsome doctor on a hospital-based hit television show who just won't give up as he continues to furiously work at resurrecting an entity from which the life has long since disappeared, a clutch of wounded family and friends looking on with a mixture of heartache and admiration, Demon Doll Records are the latest in a seemingly never ending line of aural archaeologists digging up rock treasures long since forgotten.

If, however, you have ever used a metal detector in a quest to unearth hidden valuables you will surely know that the majority of items that you find are totally worthless.

With Jetboy the only gold coin in a ring pull list of artists that includes the likes of Cats In Boots, Shel Shoc, Bastardz and Wikked Gypsy, Demon Doll have now reanimated the long-lost recorded output of Agent X, a typical Sunset Strip bunch of glam rock replicants who did pretty much nothing in their prime, some quarter of a century ago. The band's vocalist was a dude called Danny Simon who went on to front Jailhouse, another outfit who made as much of a dent as a snowflake on a Sherman tank but did have a song co-written by Ratt's Stephen Pearcy and produced by Matthew and Gunnar Nelson.

The nearest his previous band, Agent X, could get to a touch of the old hair metal magic dust sprinkled over them was, oddly, a selection of songs (partially!) produced by Runaways svengali Kim Fowley. I'm guessing that the first three tracks on this six track release are the Fowley-worked ones because, well, they are a gear up in sound quality from the three that follow: note that I said 'sound' and not 'song' quality....

'Chasing The Night' opens the retro rock night in my house and, twin guitars wailing away, keys a-stabbing, sounds a little like a piece of Gene Simmons filler from when Kiss went disco. Title track 'Rock 'N' Roll Angels' is a little more spirited and sounds like it could have played over the end credits of an '80s teen movie; believe me, that's a compliment. 'Run If You Can' is an insipid piece of Poison-lite fodder that is as inoffensive as it is interesting. 'Out On The Streets' (no, I'm not just pulling song titles out of the hat marked Cock Rock Cliché) showcases a much more keyboard heavy sound for the band and, bizarrely, makes for a catchier tune, even if it does sound like something from the heady days of ECT on Channel Four. 'Hard Road To Heaven' - sample lyric: "It's a hard road to heaven if you wanna rock" - is drowned in keyboard stabs and a severe Warrant fixation and, remarkably, is the brightest light on this disc. Final cut 'Falling In Love' rides in on a Van Halen coattail and parps and shreds its way to climax in formulaic fashion.

This release is little more than a vanity project which, given the subject matter, will probably be considered complimentary. This time capsule may slap a smile on the faces of tens of Elnett-rophiliacs who refuse to let their painted fingernails slip from their favourite decade but, for anyone wanting a history lesson, simply provides further proof as to why every record label and dollar sign douche bag exec jumped right onto the back of the heroin-addicted, track-marked wet dog of a genre called grunge.

www.demondollrecords.com