Pitchfork

A quick introduction: Towers of London are a 1980s hair-metal throwback popular in the pages of the NME for their public persona: They dress like assholes, talk reams of shit, and are intolerably obnoxious. If the Darkness copped from Mötley Crüe instead of Queen, had no ability to write or perform music, and released singles that were less "More Than a Feeling" than "Your Mother's Got a Penis", you'd have Towers of London: sub-Ali G character sketches not quite interesting enough to warrant a TV show.

And they haven't even got the genre right: Somehow, their pure-camp Poison cribbing emits an ethos more aligned with post-punk. For all their balls-out bacchanalia and Johnny Rotten attitude, the only characteristics they exhibit are possibly a repressed paranoia that nearly every band is better and more interesting than them, and a coping mechanism that decides they need to "break shit" to compensate (unless I'm missing some delicate hidden layers in songs like "Fuck It Up").

Freudian diagnostics aside, these clowns basically Anglicize Andrew W.K. Tipping their hats to Axl Rose, Rotten, and every asshole band who ever put their hometown in their bandname, this carefully hairsprayed foursome (whose mantra is "drink, fight, fuck") flips a self-assured bird. Aww, but no one's looking!

Blame W.K. for already perfecting partying hard, or the Darkness setting the metal revival bar a tad high, but Towers' arena assault on mainstream pop and sweater-clad indie falls flat on its face, seeming way more contrived than the targets it aims to abominate. Lead singer Donny Tourette, for example, is actually very unlike someone truly afflicted by Tourette's-- we always know exactly what he's about to say. Even the exclamatory "yeah's" and "ooh's" feel labored over, intricately placed between masturbatory solos and dim power chords. In fact, the only mystery here at any given time is whether he'll shout "fuck you, bitch," or opt for the simple elegance of the traditional "fuck you."

Nothing reeks like punk-metal gone sour. Massive tom builds and searing solos just don't work when seguing into mind-numbing three-chord rants. Worse, these guys are gruellingly self-referential while they're at it, reminding us they're jerks ("I'm a Rat", "King"), trying to make their axes sound threatening on "Kill the Popscene" rather than actually slaying it, playing guitars on "Air Guitar". If you're seeking a legitimate metal revival, I think it goes without saying there are better places to start.