Review Summary: Enslaved to the same kind of audio, 14 tracks long.
To say that Audioslave showed promise was nothing but an understatement. I mean, come on, it's Rage Against the Machine... fronted by Soundgarden! An amalgamation of two of the most beloved bands of the 90's; how could it possibly go wrong? And true to that, the hype for their first self-titled album was immense. People were waiting all over to see what rap-metal's leading legends could do with the influence of one of grunge's leading vocalists. Then the album came out... and there was a slight problem.
The problem was that the band was just that; Rage Against the Machine fronted by Soundgarden.
Every riff, every bass line you hear could have come from the album RATM never made. It's pretty easy to replace Cornell's throaty vocals with the fire of de la Rocha's agitated raps, if you concentrate hard enough. The album just lacks
originality. The same repetitive pattern of vocals over nifty bass line, followed by generic drop-D riff hangs ominously over most, if not all of the 14 tracks. It lacks the individuality we came to admire from both bands, instead sticking to the basic tools and tricks that we know they're familiar with.
Sure, as things start off, the album seems enticing enough; the roaring energy of
Cochise and
Show Me How to Live is enough to assuage anybody's appetite. But it's only so soon that you start to realise how much some of the riffs blend together; how much
Gasoline's riff sounds like
Set it Off's, for instance. Or how unvaried Cornell's voice sounds over the 14 tracks; either he's belting it all out at high pitch, or he's sticking to his monotonous low voice. Sure, Morello's signature assortment of effects are still around, but soon even the effects fall into their own repetitive pattern; like as if the effects exist merely to assure you that Tom Morello exists, it seems like little thought has been put into them. They come and go in the verses, they come and go for the solo; you can predict with ease exactly when they're going to come in and exactly when they're going to go out. They sound cool, certainly. But what's the point when they don't have any weight to them?
The issue is not so much that the musicians lack talent; they certainly don't, and they prove it. The issue is that we've heard it all before. And that's the problem right there; what was once considered imaginative for Rage Against the Machine just doesn't cut it anymore for Audioslave. Let's look at this honestly; Audioslave is the sign of a band playing it safe, and considering how this album came from three-quarters of a band which revolutionized rap-metal as we know it, it's a shame. Quite a shame, indeed.
