Music reviews. CD reviews. Critically hip!

Up until Born into This, The Cult had been one of my guilty pleasures. While their presentation had always been a bit too much of a caricature for my taste (and one that had anachronistic to boot), their music --- well, their singles, actually --- had been full of power chords delivered with authority and hooks that more often than not sunk the barb right into your head. "She Sells Sanctuary," "Fire Woman," even "Coming Down (Drug Tongue)" still stand up to varying degrees after well over a decade.

Born into This just doesn’t quite have the fire of The Cult’s previous releases. It’s not that they’re not trying --- Diamonds, Born Into This, and Dirty Little Rockstar, the initial single, all sound as if everyone is trying, maybe just a bit too hard. Actually, that’s not quite right. They sound like a gang of middle-aged rockers carrying around the fifty-pound weight of their reputations while trying their best to go through the motions. Think of Hulk Hogan trying to do his signature leg drop in the latter part of his career; he can still do it, but he can’t jump anywhere near as high as he used to. It’s more sad than exciting.

I’m not saying that The Cult is too old to rock --- hell, Ted Nugent just released the disc of his career and he’s pushing 60 --- but to pull something like this off they need to make it sound effortless, and it doesn’t. Also, some of the tracks --- Holy Mountain comes most immediately to mind --- really suck. Holy Mountain is a ballad, and is unintentionally hilarious, with Ian Astbury doing his best Billy Idol doing his best Bing Crosby. The best track, Sound of Destruction, almost hits the mark, evoking the band’s glory days, with a fat guitar solo that is cut short by an anemic drum roll.

I don’t know if we needed a new Cult project, but if we did, the need that would have generated it is still, alas, unfilled. For myself, I would have preferred to see this good, occasionally great, band burn out, rather than fade out.