Dear readers, have you ever wanted to be in a band with your friend? But you never got off your butt to make it happen?

Yeah me too.

Well I’m going to cut right to the chase with this week’s album review. I had an opportunity to listen to a couple of friends play music together this past week and let me tell you, it was a good time.

Eagles of Death Metal – Zipper Down
released October 2, 2015
******* 7/10

At this point in Eagles Of Death Metal’s career, they aren’t likely to drum up anything new in terms of the Rock scene and experimentation. Their 4th album is a solid fare into the arena though, don’t get me wrong.

To be honest, I had not listened to much of their discography before this outing, but after about a dozen listens,  both consciously listening and daydreaming during a ride back into town during the Thanksgiving weekend, and an online education into their history, I’ve realized that this duo is a fun formula of a classic format.

My favourite track is probably their cover of Save A Prayer, but Josh Hommes and Jesse Hughes got me jumping with Complexity, crooning with Oh Girl, and laughing during Silverlake, Skin Tight Boogie, and the Reverend. In particular this lyric from The Reverend was fantastic.

Y’all can’t dance
What you need is a Reverend
To give you some boogie

Rock and roll has been around since the 1940s, so its incredibly difficult for us to appreciate how much impact it has had on music over the past 70+ years, but these guys not only get the importance of their message, they celebrate it in their music. Combining blues, garage, hard rock, and elements of satire, EODM has made their most rock-centric effort so far.

I especially enjoyed how Hughes is the frontman of the act and Hommes takes a background role more often, even though he is normally the frontman of his own incredibly successful rock band, Queens of the Stone Age.

Apparently it has been about 7 years since they released an album, but some of my more back-to-basics rock friends were excited to see these guys in the lineup at Sonic Boom 2015, so I’m not surprised to hear how fresh their sound is. These two are long-time friends, and as the old adage goes, it’s not how much time you spend with a friend, but how you spend it that really matters.

This is the kind of music you can listen to with friends over smokes, beer and mustaches. I would recommend it on a long roadtrip, at a campfire, or gearing up for a stadium event too.

The Zipper Down recording sessions took place in California, if that also helps give you sense of the pacing. And did you know that Hommes produced the whole album?

Okay one more piece of info about the band. Look at what I found on their website in the news section regarding this album release.

EODM was formed in 1998 in Palm Desert, California by best friends Jesse Hughes and Joshua Homme. Despite their band name, EODM (Eagles Of Death Metal) is not a death metal band. The story goes that a friend was introducing Joshua Homme to the death metal genre, and Homme wondered what a cross between the Eagles and a death metal band would sound like. With that, EODM was born. The band released Peace Love Death Metal in 2004, followed by Death By Sexy in 2006, and Heart On in 2008

All in all, this is a good piece of rock and roll, not particularly spectacular, either as an introductory album to the genre, a genre-defining record, or an album “you must hear before you die”. But fun nonetheless.

With that said, I hope you’ve all had a fantastic long weekend, and are gearing up for the rest of the month. Not too long from now it will be freezing outside, so enjoy the weather, your pumpkin spice everything, and come back tomorrow for a neat movie review and some more theories.

Tim!