Foo Fighters- One By One (Foo Fighters in general)

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Product:	Foo Fighters in general
Date:	16/11/02 (11 review reads)
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The new Foo Fighters album can best be described as a step forwards... and a step backwards for the band. I really hate to say that, with There's Nothing Left To Lose and The Colour And The Shape being among some of my favourite albums but when it all comes down to the bottom line, One By One is simple mediocre.

The problem arises with Dave Grohl and how he is determined to make this album their hardest ever, their loudest ever and their most adrenaline charged one... ever. I really hate it when bands say that. If bands start out hard, they stay hard. If band start out mellow, they usually stay mellow. If I want surprises from a record, I'll go to Weezer, because according to their new "experimental demos" they'll try anything (even if it sounds like a power ballad). With the Foo Fighters, I don't want surprises- I know what I'm supposed to get- one kick ass rock song after the other interspersed with often touching ballads. It's worked the cham for their last three albums, so why in the hell did Grohl want to go harder?

Well, in the wake of the new breed of "rock" stars (satirical) such as Nickelback, Puddle Of Mudd and The Calling who all play a hugely diluted version of grunge, certain "mellow" rock bands are losing credibility and before you know it originally unique bands like Blink-182 "aren't rock", Weezer "are gay" and the Foo Fighters "have sold out". This is all because of the raised public conscious towards these fake bands like Linkin Park who claim to write their own material. Therefore, as Blink-182 unsuccessfully tried on their last multi-platinum album, the Foo Fighters want to rock out. However, unlike of Blink-182 who exercised our anticipation levels to the limit and delivered what was essentially Enema Of The State Part Two (although it is a darn good record)- the Foo Fighters do deliver on One By One which is without a doubt their hardest re
cord yet.

What people like Grohl haven't really captured yet is that people need to mix that hard edge with some decent riffs. For example, would Smells Like Teen Spirit be world-defying if it was a death-metal thrash? Grohl should look at Queens Of The Stone Age as an example (after doing the drums on their fabulous album Songs For The Deaf). Here, in Queens is a band that mixes the grittiest guitar textures and most un-commercial pyrotechnics with clever hooks and wonderful vocal performances on the whole. What the Foo Fighters lack is in those textures, those pyrotechnics, those melodies that they sustained so wonderfully on hits like Monkey Wrench, This Is A Call and Stacked Actors.

While hard-hitting edge of your seat rock like the fabulous single All My Life, the blitzkrieg bop of Have It All, the sonic potency of Times Like These, the electric rumbling of Disenchanted Lullaby and the power-pop hole in one of Overdrive play the trick firmly and are classic Foo Fighter tunes, songs like the dreary, loud, headache-inducing Low and most of the latter part of the album seem lethargic without accomplished melodies. After a superb first half, this got me thinking this was the best album ever but then the huge slip came and the gradient of quality gradually decreased after that. One of the key problems is on the latter part of the album, Grohl can't seem to get out of the blues key. Prime examples are the dreary ballad Tired Of You, the strange undulatin key change on Lonely As You and in the worst case, the nosedive chorus (yes, it literally falls flat on its face) of Burn Away. And to finsih off the album, Grohl cmmits one last insult- creating a song that sounds so Nickelback-alike that for a few moments I thought I was listening to the radio. Ender Comeback should please the MTV generation but compared to THE classic Foos ender Exhausted, it simply pales in comparison.

So after three years wait, Grohl has come up with an album
that is certainly enjoyable, often reliable, sometimes boring but always hard, thrashy rock. Some people would have expected more in that time period. For example, in less than a year Feeder made the quantum leap from radio-friendly mongers to the new Smashing Pumpkins with Comfort In Sound while in three years Radiohead went from The Bends to Ok Computer.

So, a worthy chapter in the Food lifespan but more like the Colour And The Shape 1.5 than the fully fledged rock successor that fans want from that album.

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