On paper, this band should have never worked (well according to my RATM obsessed mate): the musical side of Rage Against The Machine teaming up with a former grunge idol? But strangely enough and despite all reservations, it worked... at least for 5 years and 3 albums.       



Audioslave by Audioslave (their first album) had me converted to their sound from the first listen. Not very difficult: it is not every day that you can listen to a guitar intro mimicking a helicopter as an album opener ('Cochise'). The following songs do deliver in the heavy department ('Set It Off', 'Show Me How' to 'Live, Exploder') and the mellower 'Getaway Car' and 'I Am The Highway' prove the band's versatility while Like A Stone tugs at your heartstrings despite, or possibly because of, its simplicity. Chris Cornell's voice manages to deliver in the studio and makes for a head pounding delivery. However, even if he can still belt as much as in the old days (yes, I did buy a few Soundgarden albums later on), his tone has been irremediably damaged and the "quieter" songs do suffer from it during the verses. Yet his songwriting does manage to make you ponder about a few things,  and lyrics are worth listening to and interpreting, especially when Like A Stone's meaning turns out not to be that obvious (in a good way).

      

Now, since to me every song on this album was a keeper, I went on to buy their 2nd and 3rd (and final) albums.

    

While Out of Exile (their second output) is not as heavy and "ballsy" as their first album, it still manages to deliver a few good radio tunes such as 'Be Yourself' and 'Doesn't Remind Me', along with 'Yesterday To Tomorrow' (for its melodic sound). 'Your Time Has Come' and 'Drown Me Slowly' deliver another load of the heavy craziness that made the first album while 'Man Or Animal' seems to put together a new kind of crazy. However, a few flaws are showing: 'Heaven's Dead' resembles 'Getaway Car' too much to stand on its own and 'Dandelion' really is an oddball song (trying to be too sweet and not fitting in). Even if the producer was the same for this album as for the first one, there is something missing. My guess is they tried to be different from the first album, yet keep exactly the same form.

Throughout, the song structure never breaks the verse-chorus-verse-chorus-bridge-chorus. If comments on Wikipedia are to be believed, a lot of the songs from this album were leftovers from the first one: this could explain the undebiable similarities

      

After this came Revelations. I do not like funk, I am a rocker, Audioslave are rockers and it should stay that way. Revelations to me never really left an impact. Yes, there are some heavy songs, like 'Revelations', 'Sound of a Gun', 'Shape of Things To Come', and their most political and gut-wrenching track 'Wide Awake', but this album is trying to be too many things at once. You can sense clearly that 'Someday' was meant to be catchy, but starting out with such a loud chorus puts you off the song straightaway. 'Original Fire', on the other hand, manages to catch your interest by laying the chorus first. 'Broken City' is a misplaced oddball as it is way too funky (and the guitar riff just plainly annoying) to qualify as anything remotely resembling an Audioslave track. 

All in all, this album feels like experimentation gone wrong and you are left with a few good tracks, a few album fillers and a couple of annoying songs. However, if you enjoy your hard rock with a bit of funk injected into it for good measure, knock yourself out. My wildly uneducated guess would be that the band was being criticised for the similarities between their first and second and really did try to make something different, which they did and they have to be praised for that. Too bad we will never see what direction these guys would have taken for their fourth album...

Posted In Features, Oct 01 2008. Words - Mary Hellen