Them's Fightin' Words

I used to like this band. Back in the 90s they had some pretty killer songs and their debut album Core (1992) was definitely one of the better albums to come out of the grunge era.

Their second and third albums were also ok, but by the time albums four and five rolled around it was pretty obvious to their rapidly diminishing fan base that whatever magic these grunge / alternative / arena rockers had back in the early 90s was pretty much dead and bloated.*

So why, I ask you, why in God’s name would you want to come back, nine years later and record another album?

There’s only one excuse to go there, and that’s if you’ve been working long and hard over those nine years to write material that really gets people sitting up and listening, material that lives up to the hype a nine year hiatus is likely to create, but did Stone Temple Pilots do that? Did they release that album?

No. They did not release that album. They released a turd instead. Another almighty stinker to remind the world that while the grunge era might have been badass while it was happening but it’s fucking over now and should be buried in the same landfill our flannel shirts ended up in.

From the opening track “Between the Lines” this album aims low and misses. How about these for brilliantly written, awe-inspiring lyrics, “Penguins don’t fly / Crocodile Sunday smile / Really love to fish / But don’t like super-fishy people”.

Even worse is the way “Between the Lines” shamelessly rips off the Nirvana classic “Stay Away” like nobody’s business. Hit play and see for yourself.

Do those two vocal lines sound a little similar to you? Yeah, that’s because at best all this album amounts to is a half-assed attempt at rehashing what other bands did much, much better back in the 90s.

One minute they sound like a bad Soundgarden cover band (“Take a Load Off”) and the next they’re banging out Blind Melon-type choruses with reckless abandon (“Fast As I Can”), but that’s not even the worst of it.

The worst of it is the track “Cinnamon” which sounds like it was written and performed by Hanson. And then to prove they can still shake things up, they end the album with the track “Samba Nova” which, as the name suggests, sounds like a samba song someone wrote after pushing two Es up his arse.

When they’re not ripping off everyone from Blind Melon to Spacehog to David Bowie (I swear the chorus line in “Dare If You Dare” is taken verbatim from the Bowie classic “All The Young Dudes”)  they’re trawling their previous albums for riffs they can regurgitate to try and make sound fresh.

The closest this album comes to producing a half-decent track is the bizarrely titled “Hickory Dichotomy” which has a certain nursery rhyme catchiness to it if you don’t mind listening to frontman Scott Weiland’s meandering pseudo-intellectual lyrics.

Like I said, I used to like this band, I really did, but I just feel that the new self-titled album is about as interesting as listening to an hour long sound effects record of traffic noise.

Final Verdict: 3/10

*10 points for anyone who sees what I did there. TEN!