audioslave ‘out of exile’: even better than expected
Monday, June 6th, 2005I was out at Best Buy this weekend and saw the new Audioslave album, Out of Exile, was on the shelves, so I bought it. I’m not a big fan of handing over money to the RIAA consortium, but this band is one of a handful that is worth the money. I was a huge fan of Soundgarden in the 90’s, and somewhat of a Rage Against the Machine fan as well, so there really wasn’t any question that I would enjoy Audioslave. I loved their self-titled first album, so I had high expectations for the second one.
When Chuchu and I first walked out of Best Buy and got into the car, we popped in the album and played it “Chuchu style”, meaning we listened to about the first 30 seconds of each song, played it at medium volume, and skipped through the whole thing (no, she’s not a rock fan). Listening to it like that, I was a little worried about liking the album, since it seemed a little soft from only hearing the beginnings of the songs. However, after Chuchu went home later that day, I played it “John style”, meaning I turned up the volume and bass and played the album so that it makes the house/car shake, and the true nature of the album exploded at me. Now after listening to it for a few days and losing a little bit of hearing, I can honestly say that the new album is awesome, maybe even better than the first. The title track “Out of Exile”, is definitely my favorite so far, but like a lot of great bands, my initial favorite never ends up being my favorite on the album (”Like a Stone” was the initial fav on the first, but I now feel “Gasoline” was the best). The rest of the album is solid also…I’m sure I’ll be playing this for several months to come.
