Rapid Fire: Paramore, Steel Panther, Maximo Park

It's Rapid Fire time! This time, the theme is modern Rock albums heavily inspired by 80s music. We've got an album inspired by New Wave, an album inspired by Hair Metal and an album inspired by Alternative/Pop Rock. These are all albums released within the last ten years of writing this post so I consider them "new" or "modern" Rock albums, even though there are probably better albums I could've picked that are more recent.
Anyway, enough about that. Time to get tubular!


1. After Laughter - Paramore

I've made my thoughts on Paramore clear in the past so you might be asking yourself why I chose to discuss their latest album here. My girlfriend has been listening to this album non-stop recently but I have to say, I didn't actually hate it. It's a huge departure from their whiny, teen oriented faux-Rock sound into more of an upbeat, 80s New Wave affair and whilst there aren't any songs on the album that I love to the point of wanting to listen to them of my own free will, After Laughter does a good job of holding my interest until the last song is done.
As suggested by the album's name and cover, After Laughter is all about contrasting the pleasant, superficial visuals with more sombre lyrical themes. This is perfectly demonstrated in the album opener, "Hard Times". It might sound like something played during Disco Night at your local club but it's not all wine and roses when you give it a second listen. Whilst there are plenty of tracks that go great lengths to sound joyful by blending modern and 80s musical effects ("Told You So", "Grudges"), the band aren't afraid to get artistically mopey with their music when appropriate ("26", "Tell Me How") offering musical variety that keeps listeners engaged.
Overall, the band did a pretty great job of creating a new album that isn't all about hollow nostalgia. Sure, it's present but it feels less like a cheap attempt at getting noticed and more like an intentional desire to blend a musical sound people associate with happiness with lyrical themes about loss and depression. If the band combined these themes with exclusively modern Pop elements, it'd sound generic and probably too far removed from the band's sound. At least After Laughter's New Wave elements still trace back to the band's past as a Rock band, although I can't imagine fans of their high school Pop Rock dirge taking a liking to this as much as previous albums. Personally, I'd say it's great if you previously disliked Paramore and would recommend it to fans of 80s Pop.

1. Hard Times

2. Rose-Colored Boy

3. Told You So

4. Forgiveness

5. Fake Happy

6. 26

7. Pool

8. Grudges

9. Caught In The Middle

10. Idle Worship

11. No Friend

12. Tell Me How

ALBUM RATING - 7/10

Yes, I liked a Paramore album. It's motivated me to check out some more of their older stuff, although I wasn't a big fan of their self-titled album from a few years ago. Ah well, it's something. Next is an album that's also something!


2. Feel The Steel - Steel Panther

When I last discussed Steel Panther and their latest album, Lower The Bar, I talked about how they were overly reliant on their crude lyrics as a parody of the Hair Metal genre. Since this was their first album, I thought it'd be appropriate to look at the band before they started beating a dead horse. Naturally, this album is far stronger than Lower The Bar...and far more inappropriate, but I'll get onto that in a bit. Album opener "Death To All But Metal" is the audio equivalent to the opening fight scene in The Lego Batman Movie; all the cards are on the table and you find yourself asking "Jesus, how the hell can they possibly go higher than this?"
It consists of the band mouthing off against modern Pop/Rock artists such as blink-182 and Kanye West whilst also containing some amusing self-referential lyrics about their rhyme structure. It introduces you to Steel Panther and sets the tone for the rest of the album. However, just because the first song is a powerhouse of Hair Metal riffs and aggression, that doesn't mean the band shy away from power ballad parodies such as "Community Property" and "Stripper Girl". They're decent tracks but if the band wanted to sound like a real 80s Hair Metal band, they probably should've toned the production values down (or at least waited until follow up albums to use string accompaniments).
It's hard to describe this album without using the same phrases from my Lower The Bar review, as the band still lovingly yet subtly plagiarise their 80s Hard Rock influences such as Bon Jovi ("Party All Day") and Whitesnake ("Fat Girl") but the entire album is spoilt by dumb lyrics that milk mildly amusing gags raw. The only song I rate highly is one that was clearly written to get radio promotion, "Eyes Of A Panther", as it's just a solid Hair Metal track that isn't trying to be funny or rude. If the album had more of these on the standard edition tracklist, I'd like it a lot more, but as it stands it's a good joke gone too far.

1. Death To All But Metal

2. Asian Hooker

3. Community Property

4. Eyes Of A Panther

5. Fat Girl

6. Eatin' Ain't Cheatin'

7. Party All Day

8. Turn Out The Lights

9. Stripper Girl

10. The Shocker

11. Girl From Oklahoma

ALBUM RATING - 6/10

Finally, an album by a band I used to love and have probably seen live more than any other Rock/Metal group.

3. The National Health - Maximo Park

Despite sounding like a typical modern UK Indie band for their first three albums, I still rated Maximo Park better than other generic bands of a similar genre like Arctic Monkeys and Razorlight because they had a bit more energy to them. Their fourth album could be considered more of the same but to me, sounds a bit less like Rock and more like 80s Alternative and Synth-Pop blended into a new sound. Despite this, the album does start off as Rock. Album opener "When I Was Wild" is a minute long soft introduction to the true album opener and title track, "The National Health". This track inappropriately paints a picture of fast paced modern Rock but damn, it's a good tune.

A better opener probably would've been the lead single, "Hips And Lips". Sure, it has some Rock elements but it's largely built around New Romantic style vocals and synth melodies. The rest of the album contains a collection of Alternative tracks that once again blend familiarity of 80s groups such as REM with a more contemporary sound ("Until The Earth Would Open", "Wolf Among Men") and a few synth heavy tracks that wouldn't sound out of place at Goth clubs ("Banlieue").

This album feels more like a collection of songs thrown together than a solid, cohesive album. Overall, The National Health doesn't quite "experiment" as much as I imagine the band felt they did after releasing it but as a follow up to previous albums, it's pretty good. To me, the better tracks are ones where the Rock aspects take precedence over the Synth-Pop ones as opposed to mixing them evenly or giving Pop priority and the album doesn't feature too many of them. However, if you like modern Indie with a generous splashing of 80s Pop, I'd recommend this album. If you want more energetic Rock with some heavy keyboard accompaniment, check out Our Earthly Pleasures instead.

1. When I Was Wild

2. The National Health

3. Hips And Lips

4. The Undercurrents

5. Write This Down

6. Reluctant Love

7. Until The Earth Would Open

8. Banlieue

9. This Is What Becomes Of The Brokenhearted

10. Wolf Among Men

11. Take Me Home

12. Unfamiliar Places

13. Waves Of Fear

ALBUM RATING - 7/10

And that's October! Have a happy Halloween and I'll see you next month!

Lower The Bar - Steel Panther

Well this is a sharp contrast to my last review but here we are. I'm reviewing the latest Steel Panther album because all the real bands got their shit together last year instead.

Steel Panther have always been a band I tend to stray away from when searching for new music as I know I'm never going to listen to their material enough to justify owning it in the first place. It's not that they suck or that I have a personal hatred for any particular member of the band, it's just that I'm not a big enough asshole to blast their music out my car or sit in private rocking out to what's clearly a massive parody of their own genre. Everything I've heard of the band suggest they have one dimension, maybe two at a push; generic Hair Metal numbers with uninspired lyrics about sex and occasionally power ballads with a bit more thought put into the quality of the lyrical songwriting.
Album opener "Goin' In The Backdoor" is firmly in the first category. The guitarwork may be solid but the structure and rhythm is fairly typical of your bog standard Hair Metal band like Poison or Motley Crue...but mostly Poison. There are plenty of these songs dotted throughout the album such as "Pussy Ain't Free" and "Wrong Side Of The Tracks (Out In Beverly Hills)"; great music, embarrassing lyrics that prevents the song from being likable. However, to the band's credit, they really do get the music just right. You can pick a series of songs from 80s Hair Metal playlists with tracks off this album thrown in random places and they'd blend together perfectly despite there being a 30 year gap in between.
There's also the hint of some musical development as several tracks sound less like Hair Metal B-sides and more like Hard Rock singles. "Anything Goes" still has silly lyrics but the use of synth, David Lee Roth screeches and epic riffs give it a Van Halen-esque quality, along with unwritten KISS tune "I Got What You Want" and "Poontang Boomerang", even if the latter flat out steals the chord sequence from "Blackout In The Red Room" - Love/Hate. There are also tracks clearly taking influence from other Rock outfits from the 70s such as "Walk Of Shame" containing a Joe Perry guitar riff and a cover of Cheap Trick's "She's Tight" rounding the album off nicely.

These are all songs that would've been vastly improved if the lyrics weren't so blatant and crass, even if that is Steel Panther's entire shtick. They should've taken a page out of Tenacious D's book and released two versions of the album; one with the original lyrics and one with clean ones that sound much funnier when you're left to imagine what they're actually singing. Sure, this could be seen as them selling out to get more radio play but they are Hair Metal. When was the last time you heard a great Hair Metal album that wasn't written with the intent of raking in cash and pussy?
Some tracks are just about passable on the lyrical front, such as power ballad "That's When You Came In". You can justify crude lyrics if they're presented in a relatively innocent or tongue-in-cheek way (see "Christmas Time (Don't Let The Bells End)" - The Darkness or the heavier Cheap Trick songs) as opposed to flat out singing about how much you like the feel of your dick in someone's arse. You can call me a prude but it's not a matter of me finding the lyrics distasteful; they're just not funny anymore. There's only so long the joke can go on for and four albums in, it's getting pretty fucking stale.
"Wasted Too Much Time" is a good example of where the band succeed and fail all in one song. If you've never heard Steel Panther before and listen just up to the first minute, it has the power to be hilarious. It starts off like a Hair Metal power ballad and you think it's going to be another break-up song with cringe-worthy lyrics but then it gets to the chorus and it sounds like a funny take on all those godawful heartbreak hymns. It would be a great joke if used as a snippet in a comedy film, just like This Is Spinal Tap did with select tracks. However, just like many tracks from This Is Spinal Tap, it can't stand up on its own feet when presented as an actual song.

Similar to how earlier albums experimented with branching into Whitesnake and Warrant style songs, Lower The Bar takes more of a plunge into Hard Rock territory but without toning some of the lyrics down, it's all for naught. However, this is the catch-22 of Steel Panther. Their entire appeal is the over-the-top nature of their lyrics paired with well written Hair Metal/Hard Rock music. If they change the foundations of their music, they risk losing fans without standing out enough to gain new ones but if they remain the same for another four albums, they also risk losing fans to bands that are adapting and challenging themselves to make new, exciting material.
Steel Panther need to make a decision as to whether they want to risk losing elitist fans by going more commercial, continue treading water whilst hoping for the best or push the parody even further by creating an entire mythology for the band and releasing a "90s Hair Metal album" that signifies their "decline", only with better music and cleverer lyrics. I don't see that happening any time soon, though, so I guess we can expect another balls to the wall record with fast paced songs about fingering, 69ing, sex addiction and Nutella sandwiches (the sex act, not the food. Don't look it up; you've been warned).
I rate this album 5/10 for having some pretty sweet tunes, marred by off-putting lyrics though they may be. However, I can't bring myself to say that Lower The Bar is anything better than average and would only recommend this to fans of Steel Panther or Hair Metal music as opposed to Hair Metal songs. Also imbeciles who can hear the same joke hundreds of times and piss themselves laughing with every delivery of the word "cock", provided they can stomach the sound of 80s Rock instead of their usual musical diet of dubstep, chart music and The Killers.