Roadkill-God Bless America

No label
2007

Roadkill hail from Tasmania and this album was recorded back in July. I don't know what the music scene is like there, but I hope that there are some more creative bands there than these guys. If this had been done around 1988-1990 and done by a very young band then I might have passed it off just second rate and thought the musicians had time to grow. However my initial thought on this album was "these guys are old enough to know better". This is a highly generic in a style that wasn't that creative when it was done twenty years ago. The lyrics bother me more than the music because it's just so blatantly bad and uninspired and they don't really do anything to hide it. The problem isn't so much a lack of skill, but rather that it's at best bland and at worst soulless. It's almost like they found a stash of songs that Junkyard or Little Caesar didn't think was good enough for them yet Roadkill decided it was good enough for them. There are some songs that are better than others. A number of the songs here have a real late 80's sound and those tend to be the worst. The tracks that sound a little more like the early 80's work a little more or at least comparitively. My favorite part of this album is easily the vocals and at times there is a little bit of a classic rock sound to them. That helps to set them apart just slightly from being a complete copy of bad hair bands. However the production works against the vocals a little as there are times when I start to hear some promise, but either the sound is just too low or the vocalist's range isn't strong enough for it to totally work. I know of bands that can make this style work, but those bands either have a strong spirit or they know how to make the music fun. I'm afraid that Roadkill don't have those kind of skills and instead they come across sounding like a bad bar band who would have better luck sticking to playing AC/DC and Aerosmith covers at some club on a Tuesday night.

http://www.myspace.com/roadkillaus