As a fan of music and of a band, nothing can be more frustrating than seeing a great band make a fantastic album or albums and then flat line.
Rocket From the Crypt would be such a band. After a few solid albums, culminating in the release of their classic
Scream, Dracula, Scream! album on Interscope, the band seems to have been trudging over the same ground for the past few albums. Yeah, they survived that horrible ska ordeal where they were lumped among many ska bands just because they had horns, and they're still alive and kicking, yet it seems that they haven't truly ROCKED for many years. And with this album containing song titles such as "Bucket of Piss," "Dumb Blind Horny," and "Too Many Balls," it's hard not to feel as though this is some poor excuse for a jock's idea of a "punk rock" album. What's located on
Live From Camp X-Ray is what has unfortunately become a tired routine for
RFTC: proficiently crazy guitars, Speedo's contagious party vocals, and the horns thrown intelligently in to the mix. Yeah, it may sound good, and the strings on "I Wanna Know What I Wanna Know" are a step in the right direction as far as creativity, but the problem is that it's been done before and the ability to differentiate between
RFTC albums is becoming harder and harder. Die-hard fans of the band will dig this as they have been digging these boys for years now. The rest will buy
Scream, Dracula, Scream!, party hard to songs like "On a Rope" and "Born in '69," and leave it at that. ~ Kurt Morris