Two blues-rock heavyweights, Mike Zito and Albert Castiglia, drive Blood Brothers. Most albums marketed as blues that make their way to my doorstep are at least as much the latter as the former, and not why I am attracted to blues. Blues, to which I was introduced in the summer between my high-school graduation and my college entrance via an LP anthology of the great mid-century Chess artists, eventually led me away from rock, which no longer seemed so interesting. Mostly, I haven't looked back, and when I have, it's because I'm reviewing an album like this one.

It's true, of course, that blues was one element that led to the creation of rock 'n' roll. It's just as true that artists have every right to perform the music that suits them, and if the sounds that lost their appeal and led me to another merged eventually -- well, I understand that it's nobody's complaint but my own, albeit shared by others hobbled (if that's the word) with devotion to blues in its classical definition. I also grasp that Zito and Castiglia, whom I've heard before on their respective solo albums, are skilled at what they do, which sometimes isn't blues by any reasonable definition known to me. On the other hand, "My Business" comes across as something like a seriously rocked-up but undeniably Howlin' Wolf-shaped number.

Produced by Joe Bonamassa and Josh Smith, Blood Brothers at times expounds a fatter, more bombastic approach than can be heard on either Zito's or Castiglia's earlier albums. The results could be a whole lot worse if the duo's ears and fingers weren't more intelligent and refined than most. (Proving both their smarts and self-aware humor, they offer up the cheeky "Bag Me, Tag Me, Take Me Away" as if to acknowledge those who might complain about excess, if only to shrug them off with a wisecracking retort along the order of "Yeah, we know, but....") At the same time slower numbers, some acoustic-flavored ("ballads" to those who harbor a different concept of the term from mine), allow their repertoire, and us listeners, to relax our minds, in the words of an oldtime blues of the sort only distantly -- very distantly -- echoed here.

If recordings like this aren't necessarily for me, I certainly don't intend to imply that Blood Brothers isn't or shouldn't be for persons attuned to blues-rock. Zito & Castiglia are masters of their instruments and better than usual songwriters, too. Besides, they resurrect a JJ Cale song ("One Step Ahead of the Blues"), which is always a commendable thing to do. If this is what you like, here it is.