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Stuck Mojo

The Great Revival

Written by: PP on 19/12/2008 13:53:46

The previous Stuck Mojo album "Southern Born Killers" wasn't much to write home about, which is perhaps why they're already out with a new, significantly better outing only 9 months later. The genre's involved include crossover metal, rap metal, nu-metal, southern rap, and if that description alone gives you nausea, you should probably stop reading this review right now. But if you're ready with an open mind, you might just find that "The Great Revival" contains some of the best music belonging to these genres written since, well, since the genre crash-landed into hateville at the turn of the millennium.

After a useless intro with some distorted/feedback-ed vocals talking about worshiping a false God or something, the first track "15 Minutes Of Fame" blows the bank. This isn't gonna sound good on paper, but imagine the clean rap sections from any early P.O.D. album and mix it with "Infest"-era Papa Roach catchy hooks and choruses, then add awesomely ironic lyrics about being famous only for the duration of a certain trend (emo in this case, I believe), and you actually have one hell of a song that could've easily topped the charts back in 1999.

The problem is, we're 12 days away from 2009 today.

This wouldn't be such a problem if all tracks on the record were as solid as the aforementioned and the following track "Friends". Both songs have a nice positive, somewhat optimistic vibe to them, complete with female backing vocals and memorable choruses, and you can only give the band credit for sticking with what they know the best instead of moving into the next trend when theirs died.

"The Flood" almost manages to impress with its heavy (on Stuck Mojo scale) Taproot-esque chorus, but the verses aren't as catchy here, and more importantly, the novelty of the first two tracks is starting to wear off here. Instead, the next few tracks bring forth all sorts of nasty ideas of ripping ones own ears off with bare hands, that is unless you're an American in your 20s, in which case you wouldn't mind since you were force fed truckloads of this crap for half a decade. The fact that there are only eight real songs on the album doesn't help the band's cause either, as the three intro/interlude spoken-word tracks are irritating at best, and the re-make of John Denver's "Country Road" doesn't do much good either. With only two, maximum three good songs on the record, "The Great Revival" is reduced to the level of bands like Trapt, Nickelback and Adema who thrived on the charts with their singles but got crushed by critics for the lack of good songs aside from the select few. Napalm, time to get rid of these guys, nobody buys this stuff any longer.

Download: 15 Minutes Of Fame, Friends
For the fans of: P.O.D, Papa Roach
Listen: Myspace

Release date 01.12.2008
Napalm Records