Published on Sep 3, 2000
Back when I reviewed
Live In Your Face, the “comeback” album from hard rockers
Babylon A.D., I rhetorically asked if anyone should care that a
band who had all of one medium-level hit would be returning to the
forefront. (In short, the answer was, yes, as long as they kept it
entertaining like they did on that disc.)
Now, Derek Davis and crew are back with their latest studio
offering,
American Blitzkrieg. And, once again, I find myself asking
whether we should be working ourselves up into a lather about this
band. Had I answered after just one listen, I would have
emphatically answered “no”. Now that I’ve listened to the disc
about 10 times in the last few days (see, Dave? That’s why I
occasionally go past promised dates for reviews), I’m not so
sure.
There’s no doubt that these guys live in the past musically;
their sound is kind of like Enuff Z’Nuff meets Faster Pussycat on
songs like “One Way Ride,” “Magic Mary” and the title track. Worse,
yet, there doesn’t seem to be any desire to try and move their
sound to the 21st Century. In their defense, though, if the
retro-sound works for them, why should they change it, I guess.
Yet
American Blitzkrieg is not an album that you can settle with
giving a cursory listen to. At times, the disc challenges the
listener to approach things from the band’s point of view, both
lyrically and musically. If you’re able to do this (and it’s not
the easiest thing to either do or describe), songs like “Sinking In
The Sand,” “The Unreal” and “SuperStar” prove to be quite
entertaining. (Some of the lines, though, are a little banal.
Example from “I Wana Live” – and yes, that’s how they spelled it:
“I wanna meet Madonna / And stain her satin sheets.” Pre- or
post-pregnancy, Derek?)
In the end, though,
American Blitzkrieg recognizes it’s not a stellar hard rock
album; rather, it’s a groove-oriented album. Simply put, you either
get locked into it, or you don’t. I find myself falling into both
camps, depending on how I’m feeling when I listen to the album. A
cop-out? Maybe – but this album defies simple praise or
criticism.
Well, that’s not entirely true – on the critical side, it is a
tad short, clocking in at around 40 minutes, like many of the hard
rock albums from the genre’s glory days. In this day and age, that
seems like a short album.
American Blitzkrieg is not the kind of album that is going
to propel Babylon A.D. back into the spotlight, though it might
just remind people they’re still around, and there’s enough
substance to suggest that these guys aren’t going anywhere for the
forseeable future.