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By Andrew Danesi
Back in the winter of 2001, I heard probably the most exciting news I could ever hear in the music industry at that time. I had heard about a project featuring the three remaining members of Rage Against the Machine, and Chris Cornell, formerly of Soundgarden. At that time, the life of rock music was close to a flatline. With every rock band trying their worst to become terrible Limp Bizkit clones, the boy band craze at its peak, and most of the best bands of the '90s deciding to call it quits the year before, it seemed to be a bad time to be in a rock band.
The news of a new band being created from the ashes of the old was exciting. The rumors began to fly as magazines and fans immediately began to compare the project to Led Zeppelin before even hearing a single note. There was even news towards the middle of that summer that they had decided to can the project. It's a good thing they didn't, because Audioslave arrived just in time in January of 2002 to revive the almost dying rock scene. Four years, two albums, and one history-making concert in Cuba later, we have seen that they are more than just a side project or super group formed for the sake of money.
Revelations is Audioslave's latest album. Released just a little over one year after Out of Exile, it proves all those fans and critics were right, they are the new Led Zeppelin. Those are big shoes to fill, but I will say if anything, they are on their way to filling them. It sounds big, loud, funky, bluesy and folky all in one shot. It was written and recorded while on tour in 2005 and keeps moving at all times. The record actually feels like a live show, having very little effects on Cornell's voice and the usual pedal stomping of Tom Morello effects board. This stripped sound is a stark contrast to their last album, which featured almost too much audio affects and felt very studio-based. These songs can be played live and they would sound just as good as they do on the record.
One of my favorite tracks on this album is the song One and the Same, which sounds like it should be playing during the opening credits of a '70s disco movie like Saturday Night Fever. You can literally picture the band wearing leisure suits and gold chains while recording it. The first single off the album is Original Fire, which sounds like a long lost Aretha Franklin song from the '60s. The song even starts with Cornell singing the chorus four times before going into the verse, a common formula of many pop songs from the '50s and '60s. The bridge of the song has a classic Morello solo of noise and tapped notes on his guitar.
A truly unique song on this album is Wide Awake. Cornell is known for writing lyrics which allow listeners to take their own interpretation from a song. This song, however, is a direct attack on President George W. Bush and how he reacted to hurricane Katrina. With the line "You could look a hurricane right in the eye, twelve hundred people dead or left to die," it's hard to take any other interpretation. Don't look for a loud screaming rap song though, it's no Rage song. In fact, it's not very angry-sounding at all. It sounds very mournful, almost as if they wanted to mourn the lives lost in the hurricane through the music and use the words to directly speak to whom they felt was responsible.
This is not a record to pass up, the songs are endearing and have a very old feel to them. (While playing Original Fire, my mother swore up and down she had heard the song before when she was younger.) Much like Led Zeppelin II, this album has a funky drive and hard rock edge that doesn't disappoint. They have already made plans for a tour and have said they are working on new songs for their next album. Who knows, maybe their next album will have them writing eight-minute acoustic tracks with heavy Celtic influences and a special guest appearance by John Paul Jones on Mellotron.
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