The Cult have had a kind of scattergun career after their 80s heyday. For this one, their eighth album, they followed up the heavy, Bob Rock produced Beyond Good and Evil with this Youth produced mishmash of styles. If the predecessor was more of a 'Billy album', this is decidedly an 'Ian album'. The title track, which opens the album, borrows heavily from The Charlatans' One To Another, with added rawk guitar, and it's a little uninspiring. Things improve from here though, Citizens opens with a classic Billy Duffy guitar motif before he settles into 'chugging' mode, and the tracks ends up a bit disjointed. Diamonds is a bit like a heavy cross between R.E.M. and the Stone Roses. The guitar riff in Dirty Little Rockstar takes a large dollop of inspiration from the Rolling Stones' Undercover of the Night. Holy Mountain is the requisite Cult ballad, a slow acoustic strum and Astbury's croon. Nothing wrong with it as such, but it's not where their strengths lie.
They kick things up a notch with the rocky I Assassin, and in fact the album is a little backweighted as things take a turn for the better from here on. Illuminated has a big, strident guitar riff and the track will surely have you punching the air if that's your kind of thing. Tiger In The Sun is moodier, along the lines of some of the tracks on their 1994 self-titled album. Savages opens with sleigh bells before kicking up a mighty racket, before the driving anthem Sound of Destruction which closes the album. This last one wins you over with its punky attitude with Stones-y 'woos' and Astbury's yelps about "I got a head full of speed" It's strange that the last 4 tracks are by far the strongest on the album.
Overall, a bit of a disappointment after the unexpectedly great Beyond Good And Evil.
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