Army of Anyone

I was driving around Hilton Head Island a few summers ago delivering pizza for Papa John's when the Velvet Revolver debut album came out, and besides JoJo and a little 'Tallica, I pretty much had that VR disc going in my car non-stop. The album was pretty solid, four or five pretty decent tracks and some good filler material in between. The whole supergroup experiment worked with these guys; Guns N' Roses and Stone Temple Pilots came together and made a quality record.

So I guess we can call Army of Anyone a smaller-scaled supergroup - they don't have the big names that VR has (Slash and Duff and the drummer from Guns N' Roses, Scott Weiland of STP), but they're quality musicians (Richard Patrick of Filter on vocals, the DeLeo brothers of STP on guitar, and a pretty kickass drummer I've never heard of). So my interest was certainly piqued when I heard these guys were coming out with an album this fall. I was never a HUGE STP fan or a HUGE Filter fan (the way I am with Metallica, U2, and used to be with Foo Fighters), but I definitely dug their stuff. I remember in middle or high school borrowing Filter's Title of Record from Justin Powers and blaring "Welcome to the Fold" (a kick-ass tune that still holds up today) in my room when I got home. Put it this way, if STP and Filter had Greatest Hits albums, I would probably pick them up. Actually, maybe STP does have a Hits record, but whatever, you get the point.

So what happens when two solid rock bands like Filter and STP make a record together? Well... hmm. How can I put this nicely?

It's OK.

Regrettably, it's just OK.

Maybe I was expecting too much. The first AoA single, "Goodbye," is one of those hard, driving, hard-driving rock songs that I love. You know how it goes... Heeeeeeyyyyyyy Goooooooooooooodbyyyyeeee, Wish you were here.... It's got a good riff, really good drumming, good vocals, and best of all, it's one of those songs that gets right to the point. No little intro riffs, just straight balls-out, in-your-face rock. And then at the end, it's got that really good drumming that you just don't hear in a rock song anymore. It's just a great track; in my humble opinion, it should be up for some kind of Best Rock Song award. The rest of the album? Not so much.

It's never a good thing when your first single off a record is not only the best track on the record, it's far and away the best track on the record. (Why buy the album when you can hear the best part of it on the radio for free? (Not that I condone listening to terrestrial radio.)) And that's what we have here on the AoA disc. There just aren't many decent tracks here; #1 is a slightly above-average opener (think of it as the Trot Nixon of album-opening rock tracks) but it's not as good as #2, which is the aforementioned "Goodbye" song. After tracks one and two, there are some forgettable songs; #5 was advertised as a potential hit but I don't see it happening.

Track #6, "Disappear," is interesting because it had a lot of potential to be great - like maybe even "Take a Picture"-great - but it falls short. Richard Patrick, if you're out there reading this, hear me out for a minute. You've got a great opening to this track - little simple guitar strumming for a quick few seconds before the rest of the band sets in with a good rock sound. The verses are decent - not great but good enough to work within a hit song - but your problem is that the chorus sucks. "I try to disappear" - yes, that part. Just doesn't cut it, it's not very catchy at all. I'm listening in my car, thinking that this track can go somewhere, but it doesn't, and it's because of a lousy chorus. You know why "Take a Picture" was so huge, because it had an awesome sound with an almost equally as good refrain: "Could you take my pictureeeee, 'cause I won't remember..." It worked. The whole song worked. And you were close to taking "Disappear" to that level, but it didn't happen.

By the way, now that I bring up Richard Patrick, I had an epiphany about this guy the other day. Now, am I crazy, or is he one of the more underrated vocalists of our era? I think the common misconception about this guy is that he's a screamer, because I think a lot of people associate Richard Patrick and Filter with their first single, "Hey Man Nice Shot," which you'll remember was a loud song with screaming. And so because of that I think a lot of people slough him off as a marginal vocalist.

But I think we've been short-changing Patrick, because the other day I heard a Family Values concert recording of Patrick and Flyleaf covering "Pride (In the Name of Love)," and you know what? The guy freaking pulled it off. I think it takes 1) balls and more importantly, 2) a shitload of talent to sing a U2 song without having people immediately think how much better Bono sounds. So I'm saying it's time we start giving Richard Patrick a lot more credit as a singer.

Back to the album: There's not much worth discussing after track #6. I was disappointed to realize that track #9, "Father Figure," was, in fact, not a George Michael cover. But that song definitely more Filter-sounding than anything else on the record, and actually, it's not that bad of a track. Track #10 is OK. And I don't think I've made it all the way through track #11 yet.

And that's your album. I'm giving it two out of four stars. It's worth a few spins in your CD player, and "Goodbye" is definitely rocking, but the rest of the record doesn't stack up.

How does it compare to the Velvet Revolver debut album, you ask? Well, it holds up to an extent, but quite simply it's just not as good, and it's a shame because I like Richard Patrick and I like what his brother Robert did with his roles as T-1000 in T-2 and as a degenerate gambler in season two of The Sopranos. As for VR's disc, the first single ("Slither") wasn't the best song on the album ("Fall to Pieces"), and tracks #1, #4, #6, and #10 were all solid rock tracks. I give VR's disc three stars, and with it, the edge in debut albums from STP supergroups.