Album Review: Airbourne – No Guts. No Glory (2009)

The second album by Airbourne has the band in the same frame of mind as the first. I am suspecting this will be the modus operandi as far as this band is concerned for all of their albums. The difference between this one and the last is not the attitude of the band, but in the production and mixing of the album.

Born To Kill – A decent song to begin the album. I enjoy the song the most at the 2:30 mark when it is mostly drums, background vocals and Joel’s wail.

No Way But The Hard Way – I can envision this band doing everything in life the hard way. Again the background vocals, and the voice changes of Joel between a guttural growl and a banshee scream are the stars here.

Blonde, Bad And Beautiful – The Razors Edge like guitar work begin this song off. a fairly infectious song that can stick in your head.

Raise The Flag – This has almost a Judas Priest guitar feel to it, which is a nice surprise.

Bottom Of The Well – This is really an awesome song. The lyrics tell us this band will do whatever it takes to succeed. No matter how deep down in the shit they are, they will claw their way to the top at all costs.

White Line Fever – Fairly generic song. Not bad. Not great either.

It Ain’t Over Till It’s Over – This is not a Lenny Kravitz cover. It’s not in the same vein, and Lenny knows how to spell. A short but unique guitar solo starts this one off, and more decent guitar fill out the rest. The song gets a bit repetitive at times but is still pretty decent.

Steel Town – A perfect anthem for the typical fans of the band. Blue collar anthem in a harder edged offering than The Boss or John Cougar delivered.

Chewin’ The Fat – More sexual innuendo combine with some cool vocals and great guitar work. The drums and bass actually sound a lot better on this song than the rest of the album.

Get Busy Livin’ – The drums sound decent and Joel’s voice sounds great, however, the bass sounds like it is encased in 6 feet of fibreglass pink.

Armed And Dangerous – This sounds a bit like Night Of The Long Knives (a personal fave) so that is always a good thing. Not nearly as awesome as the aforementioned song, this is still a really good song.

Overdrive – A faster paced song with decent drumming and cool guitar. The backing vocals sound cool too. The almost complete lack of bass is the one downfall.

Back On The Bottle – The guitar work sounds a bit too copied, the song is too repetitive and generic. Not the best way to end the album.

I blame Johnny K, the producer for not trimming the fat on this album. At 13 songs it is too long. It should be between 8-10 songs. I think he figured lets throw everything against a wall and see what sticks. Also, he chose to try and over-produce this record. The straight ahead rock style that Bob Marlette chose for the last album suits this band much better. Johnny also tried to mute Joel’s voice. Let him wail like he was born to do. I also blame Mike Fraser for the mixing of this album. This album has some awful sounds to it. All they needed to do was let the players play as hard and fast as they could, and crank it up to eleven. Worked for the last record.

I think the album would have gotten higher marks, but as it is.

7.5/10