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Written by Alex Wilking Wednesday, 02 October 2013 18:12

The recording quality is top notch, but ultimately doesn’t save the album.

Riding a mechanical bull is a losing battle. No matter how hard it flails around, whoever’s on it will fall flat on the floor eventually. With Kings of Leon’s Mechanical Bull, the band takes the same formula it’s used many times before to create an album that hits that floor hard. Most of the album sounds too dull to make me believe it’s the band’s sixth studio release.

Though the joke has been made a few times before, the album itself sounds mechanical. The recording quality is top notch, but ultimately doesn’t save the album. The band has found the formula that it’s based most of their releases off of and decided to stick with it yet again — it just sounds recycled. The band doesn’t seem like their music has grown or matured. And this causes much of the album to blend together.

This is mostly due to the vocals, which in my opinion are the root of the problem. The feeling and drive behind songs like “Use Somebody” just aren’t here. And as a consequence, most of the album becomes a mix of uninteresting riffs that don’t compliment anything. I feel the only song really worth noting is the single, “Supersoaker,” which does carry some spark.

What the band has written in the past at least had some feeling and emotion behind the vocals. If you did thoroughly enjoy the band’s past releases, you may find something here that sticks out to you. But most of it sounds muddled and poorly stuck together. I do believe it is a step up from the band’s past release, Come Around Sundown but a baby step at that.  C-  |  Alex Wilking

Standout Tracks – Supersoaker

R.I.Y.L. - Oasis, Placebo, MGMT