Review Summary: Whatever happened to the Killers?
Battle Born is the Killers fourth outing, and since they haven’t made an album in four years, it was meant to be a fantastic return for them. Unfortunately, Battle Born doesn’t live up to the standards of Hot Fuss or Sams Town, and even Day and Age. In fact, it’s pretty damn poor. It’s not like they didn’t have time to construct something creative like Hot Fuss, heck, they had four years. Whereas Hot Fuss and Sams Town had memorable songs that stayed in your head for a good long while such as Mr. Brightside and Smile Like You Mean It, Battle Born doesn’t feed us anything other than the same bland and unexciting tracks one after another. And boy, it does get repetitive.
The single Runaways was actually a good song, it stayed in your head and it tricked us into thinking that the album was going to be something great. The album opens with Flesh and Bone, which is a semi decent track but not even in comparison with Jenny Was A Friend Of Mine. The Way It Was I actually enjoyed too, so by this point I was thinking that it is going to pick up. But no, from there, it went straight downhill. Here With Me came packing with horrible lines like “don’t want your picture on my cell phone”, with average vocals that made the lyrics sound very, very mediocre. From Here on Out seems like just a filler track, and others like Miss. Atomic Bomb and Deadlines and Commitments are just forgetful and phase from your memory as soon as they finish. At this point, you’ll be ready to turn it off and forget it ever happened. But as the album goes on, you can only hope it gets better. But it doesn’t. Not even close.
The thing is, Brandon Flowers and co. are fully capable of making great songs. In the past, they have made some catchy and deep songs, so what’s happened? Whatever happened to the catchiness of Bones, Jenny Was a Friend of Mine and Spaceman? Have the Killers just stopped trying? Or were they trying something new (although nothing new was discovered here?) or are they just trying way too hard to make the comeback that we all so anticipated? Whatever they were trying to do, it has not worked in the slightest.
Recommended songs: Runaways
