CD Review - Buckcherry

by Mike Corrigan


Crass and obvious rock music from a group of L.A. poseurs more interested in attitude than interesting ideas. You know an album is bad news when you immediately discover that the music inside sounds exactly how you predicted it would by looking at the slouching, metal ring festooned, grossly over-tattooed would-be menacing loveboys on the back cover.


Derivative Rolling Stones arrangements and faux-AC/DC heft don't add up to anything remotely resembling originality -- or even fun. Lead yapper Josh Todd has all the swagger of Axl Rose and all the strung out boy mystique of Steven Tyler, but unfortunately, the comparisons stop there. He's about as soulful as Kathie Lee Gifford and about as subtle as a brick to the head.


The band seems bent on ripping off everyone in earshot while simultaneously reducing rock to its lowest common denominator. Time Bomb (their sophomore effort) is filled with the same generic crunch-rock-by-the-numbers and mind-numbing posturing that made its 1999 self-titled debut so ultimately forgettable.


Listening to it is like being forcibly dragged bound and kicking through a morass containing every idiotic rock cliche imaginable. The blatant Black Crowes rip-off, "Ridin'" is followed two songs later by the hateful, testosterone-addled bluster of "Porno Star." If you've made it this far, get ready for the dreadful, "Place in the Sun" and the requisite ballad, "(Segue) Helpless" wherein, we're supposed to identify with the protagonist's heartbreak and loneliness. Too bad by this time, we're way past caring.


If there's a more thorough indictment of the current sorry state of commercial rock lurking out there somewhere, I'd like to hear it. Then again, no I wouldn't.