The Killers return from their hiatus with the release of their latest album, Battle Born, and while there are flashes of potential, there seem to be too many cocked legs from the Flowers portion of the camp to pick things apart.
Flesh And Bone is an otherwise cool enough track that’s punctured by a silly “this could decay” interlude that trips up what could have been a decent introduction to Battle Born. Having spent a lot of time in Nevada, the references to the state moto adds a lot to the song, which just about makes up for the dodgy section.
Runaways is a return to the dramatic rock that made Day and Age. It’s a catchy singalong with a good drums and synth mix. It’s got lyrics that are easy to empathise with, and a feeling of being down to earth, which compensates a little for conceited lyrics elsewhere.
The Way It Is has got a good riff, decent rhythm and classic Flowers vocals that lead into the slow stadium ballad that is Here With Me. It’s not entirely terrible, but it does signal the direction the album is about to move in, especially the Darkness-esque high vocals towards the end of the song.
A Matter Of Time is a weak attempt at Halloween-style horror that sounds laughable at times. Deadlines and Commitments isn’t much better and is the first of the tracks on the album that seem to be influenced by Brandon’s increasing lyrical religious rhetoric with talk of “losing your way” and “places in this house you can stay”.
Miss Atomic Bomb sounds like it should be bad ass and while it is a slight reprieve musically, and in general Flowers’ vocals and lyrics are good with shades of Bruce Springsteen, there’s too much vanity and excessive vocalisation.
However, things go as low as they’ve ever been from The Killers on The Rising Tide, which sounds like it was inspired by a God channel equivalent of Glee. It’s bad… Really bad; despite a fleeting, class RAT kicked riff from Dave Keuning.
Heart Of A Girl is slow and OK-ish, with a bit too much dramatic vocals. Again, Keuning’s guitar is the best part of the song with some nice slides, but it’s nowhere near enough to make up for some of the silliness on the track and the biblical asides.
From Here On Out sounds like a decent eighties inspired rock anthem, but again it’s clearly a jingle infomercial for Christianity. Be Still isn’t any better, taking things slow but no further away from the sermon that the album has become.
Luckily, final track Battle Born brings things back around a little, but by this stage it’s hard to know if it’s just a sense of relief after the last three or so songs. It’s got a cool guitar build with a good chorus and wandering vocals.
Battle Born is the least impressive album to date from The Killers, but from the sound of some of the better portions it could have easily have gone the other way with a couple of small changes (Flowers being banned from writing lyrics with holy books in his hands would have been a good start). It’s not that religion has no place in rock, but sermons and rhetoric are definite record killers.
The Killers, Battle Born album review: 2.5/5
