It's hard to believe 2013 was 5 years ago - it doesn't really feel that long ago. But that is the last time BRMC released a record with "Specter at the Feast" which I thought was great. But although they have always been a reasonable sized band they have never really reached the peak of their first 2 albums. Especially the first with monster hits such as "Spread your love" and "Whatever happened to my rock and roll (punk song)". But I think the main reason for this is because they turned into more of an albums band rather than a singles band. But one things for sure is that they have always been a rock band and in "Wrong Creatures" they certainly deliver in all aspects of the genre.
As per the normal strategy with bands these days with bands releasing 3 or 4 tracks off the album before it's out, spreading them out over 2 or 3 months prior to release. Black rebel also adopted this approach. First track to drop was "Little things gone wild". A song which really gets into your head and a really encouraging sign for the album. This showed hints to me that maybe they were heading back to a more "big" sounding singles approach as it is quite catchy. My only critism is that I get that choruses are meant to repeat throughout a song. But the same lyrics seem to repeat a lot throughout the song which is quite short as it is. But the actual musical backdrop behind the singing is really good.
Then "Haunt" came along which I find quite chilling and is a slow paced track. It has got this mesmorising hook which loops round throughout. It works well and once again shows how good BRMC are at different types of song. Then "Question of faith" and "King of Bones" came along and things were looking up for the album. But personally I would prefer bands would just release an album without dropping singles in the build up to releases so you get everything in the oner and are not fed up with songs before they are out which I think which led to my critism of the "Little things gone wild". But at the same time I realise they need to do this to promote the album. Maybe I should just try and avoid listening to singles released before the album is out in future.
The actual album itself still oozes this atmospheric rock and I can almost smell the smokey atmosphere Black Rebel create with their music. And really I would say that apart from "Little things gone wild" most of the tracks fit into the "album track" category rather than being big singles. A particular highlight for me is "Echo". This is such a kick back track which just flows magnificantly and the vocals are just so on point. The nicest surprise on the album is "Circus Bazooka" towards the end of the album. I think it's an organ or something thats predominant throughout this track and its quite a chirpy, different sounding song which adds quite a fun element to the album. It's in the later tracks in the album that sometimes you can get distracted as a listener so it is good to have something like this at that point to pull you back in.
Overall this is a great album which I think is even better than "Specter at the feast". It will always be hard to reach the standard they reached in their early days. But this is such a good attempt. They have clearly thrown everything at this album and really thought about the balance of the different types of tracks and positioned them well throughout the album. More importantly in terms of quality there are not many skipable tracks on here.
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