AUDIOSLAVE/Out of Exile

(Interscope/Epic)

©Michael Koster, June 2005

On its wonderfully ferocious sophomore effort, Audioslave delivers guitar rock that pounds as hard as anything out there. But it offsets that monster throb with ethereal ballads that float majestically above the radio pap currently polluting our Clear Channel airwaves. Vocalist Chris Cornell, whom I never tire of hearing, drops and raises octaves with ease on ballads like “Heaven’s Dead.” But he can sing with throaty, primitive intent as well. If you’re familiar with the band’s scorching 2002 debut, you may get a sense of deja vu, because many of these tunes are so similar to songs on the first record. It’s a flaw—one the band, which is limited musically, may always have. But 30 seconds into “Your Time Has Come,” the record’s battering opener, you’ll forgive them. From start to finish, the songs are so meaty it doesn’t matter. Yet it’s exciting to hear the quartet—basically the super-hard, super-basic music section from Rage Against the Machine and the singer from Soundgarden—break new territory on cuts like “Doesn’t Remind Me.” The song meanders with a dreamy, stream-of-consciousness quality that hooks you softly: “I walk the streets of Japan till I get lost/Cause it doesn’t remind me of anything/With a graveyard tan carrying a cross/Cause it doesn’t remind me of anything.”

You may get tired of guitarist Tom Morello’s never-ending reliance on computer gadgetry and effects boxes to tweak his leads, which aren’t that strong at the core, yet admittedly don’t sound like anybody else’s. But such limitations probably won’t turn you off to the best hard rock album of the year so far.