AC/DC – POWER UP
Rock and roll titans AC/DC hit us with their second studio album without rhythm guitarist Malcolm Young, but their first since his death. However, every track on this album was co-written by Young before his death, which was enough to give AC/DC fans hope that the hyper-infectious riff magic was still there. Unfortunately, that didn’t end up being the case. Don’t get me wrong, the unmistakable AC/DC sound and style remain present, but the memorable hooks and riffs that made Highway to Hell and Back in Black classic records just aren’t really there. With a few choice exceptions, we get a slew of mid-tempo blues-rockers that are good for a head bob in the moment, but don’t really hang in your memory. Even the better moments only work because they recycle ideas from classics like “Thunderstruck” or “Have a Drink on Me,” but without quite hitting the energy or momentum that the band so effortlessly cranked out on those tracks. But hey, at the end of the day, who expected this to be as good as the band’s classics? While this isn’t a masterpiece, I wouldn’t say the band are phoning it in either, and they ultimately do a respectable job of paying tribute to the late great riff God himself. POWER UP may be little more than a victory lap for this highly accomplished classic rock band, but it’s a victory lap that couldn’t be more deserved.
Score: 3/5
King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard – K.G.
I was starting to worry. Were we really not getting any new King Gizzard this year? As if 2020 wasn’t bad enough already. But thankfully, as the year (finally) winds to a close, King Gizzard have delivered us their 16th studio album, K.G. And I must say, with this new release, King Gizzard really sound like…King Gizzard. And that’s not even a bad thing. This album has all the zany, psychedelic instrumentation and construction that keeps listeners coming back to King Gizzard’s staples, such as I’m in Your Mind Fuzz and Nonagon Infinity, plus a few moments that draw from the high-pitched droney elements of Flying Microtonal Banana. But I can’t say this album is nearly as memorable as any of those. And at this point in their career, Gizzard have more than earned the right to rehash their classic approach, as long as they don’t get too lazy with it, but it still remains slightly disappointing, especially when this band isn’t a one trick pony in the slightest. In fact, some of their more adventurous releases, such as their 2017 prog epic Polygondwanaland, and last year’s thrash metal rager Infest the Rats’ Nest (which you might remember snagging an honorable mention on my best-of-the-year list) have joined the ranks of my favorite King Gizzard albums. Overall, K.G. lives up to the standards that this band have set for themselves, but as I’ve just established, there have been several significantly better King Gizzard records released in recent years.
Score: 3.5/5
Hatebreed – Weight of the False Self
If you’ve been reading my blog for very long, you’ve probably figured out that this particular stripe of metalcore has never really been my thing. So that being said, take my opinion on this album with a grain of salt. But even not being a Hatebreed fan, I feel like the band has really bottomed out with this one. Apart from the lame, unimaginative riffs and compositions, the lyrics see Hatebreed achieve a new level of clunkiness, meatheaded simplicity, melodramatic cheese, and just plain cringe. The band can’t seem to decide whether they want to be angry and macho, or pseudo-deep and introspective, with some songs being wannabe-edgy and slightly toxic, while others offer generic, surface level life advice, from a group of guys that really have no business giving it. And all of this under a pretentious album title that almost seems to imply some level of depth and thoughtful writing went into it. If you’re a fan of this band, and you don’t read too deeply into the lyrics, this album checks all the boxes for the most part (while doing little more), but for everybody else, there’s not much here to recommend.
Score: 1/5
The Smashing Pumpkins – CYR
So I guess we’re never getting Shiny and Oh So Bright, Vol 2? Oh well. What The Smashing Pumpkins have given us instead is CYR, a double album that is supposed to be a continuation of Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness and Machina/The Machines of God. And I can’t honestly say that this new project deserves to be a part of the same conversation as these two Smashing Pumpkins classics (yes, I’m a Machina defender). It really breaks my heart to see what has become of one of my all-time favorite bands in the last couple decades, but I’m sorry to say that CYR continues to see Billy Corgan fall further down the spiral of his own self-absorbed pretension, and the return of James Iha and Jimmy Chamberlin hasn’t done much to reroute this trajectory. We see the band delve deeper into Corgan’s apparent love affair with 80s new wave, which was already creeping up fast on Shiny and Oh So Bright, Vol. 1, but at least that album featured a handful of different ideas, and packaged them into a pretty unintimidating runtime. CYR on the other hand, apart from being almost intolerably long, features minimal sonic diversity, doling out the same synth-laden grooves and melancholic melodies over and over and over for an hour and twelve minutes. And when I say this album is almost all synth, that’s not an exaggeration. The aforementioned original members may as well have stayed away, because they barely stand out anywhere on this record. The songs aren’t terrible at all, the grooves work from time to time, and the haunting female backing vocals are a really nice touch. But honestly, this really needed to be another eight-song, half hour package, in the style of Shiny and Oh So Bright. There was a time when The Smashing Pumpkins could pull off these long, ambitious, epic records, but CYR is a dry, sonically stagnant, grey blob, which comes nowhere near the magnificent emotional whirlwind that records such as Siamese Dream and Mellon Collie engulfed listeners in.
Score: 2/5
Phil Klinker Music Reviews 