Review:

on 2011-02-20 CharlesMartel Said:

SCHOOL REPORT CARD

Does not try hard enough in class.

Capable of much much better than this as early work shows, though even that could be considered to be displaying less than the full potential. I predict a bleak future unless there is more effort put in and less reliance on past output and unrealised potential. Current work is hardly worth considering and will not get the recognition which ought to be deserved given the potential quality which exists. Marks for this work have been seriously downgraded as a result of consistent failure to perform. While there are occasional flashes of good work, these are few and far between and do not constitute a commendable effort.

Has been caught copying several times and this is severely punished. Attempts to introduce new and innovative ideas have also failed miserably and the current output has not lived up to any of our expectations. It would be fair to conclude from this recent output that there has been a serious loss of direction. In comparison with others in the class, this is falling behind quite rapidly. Unless something is done to halt the decline and develop a unique style of its own, this will not stand the test of time and will result in unemployment and disappearance from view.

D-

Bad Company really flunked out with this one. When I bought it all those years ago I was expecting something which would continue, and hopefully build on the sort of work they had done on their first two albums. I wanted more blues and up-and-at-'em rock. What I got was nothing of the sort and I felt that I had rather wasted my hard earned cash on something which was decidedly below par.

Gone was the almost spontaneous blues rock of their first two albums and the raw feel of the first album was by now just a distant memory. The band had overproduced their work to the point that its links with the roots of their music had pretty much gone for good. It was almost as if they had begun flirting with prog rock and frankly they were never going to carry that off. For one thing, Paul Rogers simply does not have the voice for it. Once they began experimenting with synthesisers on "Fade Away" they really showed how far they had strayed. The sole attempt to recapture their past efforts on "Young Blood" came across as a pastiche and manages to sound dated and forced. With punk rock looming just around the corner, it was hardly the time for any rock band to be straying into this sort of territory.

Bad Company were never a band who had lived up to the enormous potential their line up suggested in my view. This album epitomised the decline which had set in as they had tried to reinvent themselves to extend their appeal. In the end, they were not going to attract any new fans with this while there was a serious danger that they would alienate others, like myself, who had started this journey with them. After this I lost patience with Bad Company and never again bothered to check them out.
Rating: 5/10