Are you ready to rock? No, really, are you ready to rock? Though it’s not a necessity, you will certainly enjoy the latest release by Eagles of Death Metal, Death By Sexy, if you are prepared to ditch your inhibitions at the roadhouse door and replace them with a Marlboro and a Pabst Blue Ribbon.
It’s opening twang exploding into a full-out Southern rock blitz, “Chase the Devil” sets the table for an all-out assault on your senses, one that quickly evolves from Lynyrd Skynyrd into a raucous dance explosion, helmed by tracks like “Don’t Speak (I Came To Make A BANG!)
Taking cues from predators like the Stooges and the Stones, frontman Jesse "The Devil" Hughes gets Death By Sexy off to an excellent start. It’s the sort of music that makes listeners think about going out on the town and calling in sick in the morning—hopefully with a much better reason than a hangover for staying in bed. “I Want You So Hard (Boy’s Bad News)” is a two-minute blast of high-pitched come-ons and celebrity cameos from Jack Black and Dave Grohl, who lovingly warn you that Hughes is bad news. Even in its short running time, it fits in a finger-melting guitar solo (that, in the corresponding video, literally blows off clothes).
It’s easy to overanalyze a disc like Death By Sexy. One could make the argument that the band’s sound veers from country guitar rawk with an overlay of dancing disco dust, to ballads like “Solid Gold,” which almost seem out of place, back to a rocker like “I Like To Move In The Night,” which is a mix of equal doses of rock iconography and irony.
Queens of the Stone Age frontman Josh Homme drums and produces on the album, and the songs sometimes capture the QOTSA aesthetic, albeit with a much lighter touch. Homme is a charismatic caveman on his kit, pounding away with a precision that quite possibly qualifies as “comic timing," and The Devil still sounds like an orgasm-ridden, poontang-obsessed, joint-rolling Elvis, and he isn’t afraid to wear his influences on his sleeve.
Ultimately, the band asks so little and gives so much, which is why the listener is advised to turn the volume to 11 and buy in to the Eagles of Death Metal’s Death By Sexy, which is, if nothing else, just a hell of a lot of fun to hear. |