Back when I reviewed
\nLive In Your Face<\/i>, the “comeback” album from hard rockers
\nBabylon A.D., I rhetorically asked if anyone should care that a
\nband who had all of one medium-level hit would be returning to the
\nforefront. (In short, the answer was, yes, as long as they kept it
\nentertaining like they did on that disc.)<\/p>\n
Now, Derek Davis and crew are back with their latest studio
\noffering,
\nAmerican Blitzkrieg<\/i>. And, once again, I find myself asking
\nwhether we should be working ourselves up into a lather about this
\nband. Had I answered after just one listen, I would have
\nemphatically answered “no”. Now that I’ve listened to the disc
\nabout 10 times in the last few days (see, Dave? That’s why I
\noccasionally go past promised dates for reviews), I’m not so
\nsure.<\/p>\n
There’s no doubt that these guys live in the past musically;
\ntheir sound is kind of like Enuff Z’Nuff meets Faster Pussycat on
\nsongs like “One Way Ride,” “Magic Mary” and the title track. Worse,
\nyet, there doesn’t seem to be any desire to try and move their
\nsound to the 21st Century. In their defense, though, if the
\nretro-sound works for them, why should they change it, I guess.<\/p>\n
Yet
\nAmerican Blitzkrieg<\/i> is not an album that you can settle with
\ngiving a cursory listen to. At times, the disc challenges the
\nlistener to approach things from the band’s point of view, both
\nlyrically and musically. If you’re able to do this (and it’s not
\nthe easiest thing to either do or describe), songs like “Sinking In
\nThe Sand,” “The Unreal” and “SuperStar” prove to be quite
\nentertaining. (Some of the lines, though, are a little banal.
\nExample from “I Wana Live” – and yes, that’s how they spelled it:
\n“I wanna meet Madonna \/ And stain her satin sheets.” Pre- or
\npost-pregnancy, Derek?)<\/p>\n
In the end, though,
\nAmerican Blitzkrieg<\/i> recognizes it’s not a stellar hard rock
\nalbum; rather, it’s a groove-oriented album. Simply put, you either
\nget locked into it, or you don’t. I find myself falling into both
\ncamps, depending on how I’m feeling when I listen to the album. A
\ncop-out? Maybe – but this album defies simple praise or
\ncriticism.<\/p>\n
Well, that’s not entirely true – on the critical side, it is a
\ntad short, clocking in at around 40 minutes, like many of the hard
\nrock albums from the genre’s glory days. In this day and age, that
\nseems like a short album.<\/p>\n
\nAmerican Blitzkrieg<\/i> is not the kind of album that is going
\nto propel Babylon A.D. back into the spotlight, though it might
\njust remind people they’re still around, and there’s enough
\nsubstance to suggest that these guys aren’t going anywhere for the
\nforseeable future.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":25544,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[6117],"rating":[5612],"class_list":["post-36750","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-babylon-a-d","rating-rating-b-minus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/36750","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36750"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/36750\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25544"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36750"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36750"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=36750"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=36750"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}