Review Summary: This was released in the early 1990s and that’s exactly where it belongs.
Before going into this album and review there is something you must understand. The Screaming Jets, in 1989, won a national “Battle Of The Bands” competition run by Australian radio broadcaster Triple J. It is important to know this because it becomes clear as soon as the first song starts that TSJ are just an average bunch of Australian blokes who picked up their instruments, learnt a few chords and rhythms respectively, and realised “hey guys, we can play music!” Of course, that wouldn’t have been complete without them having listened to AC/DC most of their lives and hailing them as “gods” of rock. And what did we do with our rock gods of the 70s and 80s?
We emulated them.
Luckily the band physically can’t copy their heroes note for note. They try really hard, but they just can’t do it. You’ll notice this right from the start when Gleeson, the lead singer, attempts a falsetto and ends up producing one of the most awkward sounds you can imagine. It’s as if he’s still working on it and hasn’t perfected the art yet.
This begs the question: “Why try?”
It’s like a guitarist attempting a riff he physically can’t do. You don’t record his attempts and put it on the album anyway. You wait until he can do it; until he’s good enough to perform it, then you record it.
TSJ forgot the last step and skipped right ahead to the recording process.
To cover up for their inability to mimic AC/DC the band picks up other influences, such as KISS. The result is basically a softer, Australian version of the latter (Oh joy!). To be fair there are a number of good guitar solos to be heard, whilst they’re not incredibly technical (remember, we’re talking about a couple of guys who most probably spent half their time down at the local pub drinking schooners) they do manage to sound interesting and save otherwise monotonous songs. Unfortunately the rest of the guitar work mainly consists of power chords, a few blandly plucked notes, and absolutely nothing else. The bass guitar is nothing special either. It’s thankfully audible, but it never strays from the root notes of the guitar chords and, as such, suffers from the same bad case of mediocrity that the other members seem to have caught.
The drumming is a surprising highlight of the instrumental section. As like the other instruments it’s nothing incredible, but Brad Heaney does add a few great drum fills here and there. The pick of the bunch being in “Stop The World” where he sustains the rhythm section nicely.
Then we come to the lyrics, the band’s true weak point. You know you’ve hit new lows before you’ve gotten off the ground when your debut has a song entitled “Fat Rich C***s” (they shortened it to “F.R.C” for the sake of public image). It’s supposed to be an ode to rich stock brokers (“you got your offices up 50 floors from the ground. You hire your slaves to bid for you”) but it comes across more as “You’re richer than me, get f****d.” With its nauseating hook sung in a thick ocker accent.
“You fat, fat, fat rich c***s.”
And the album is littered with laughably bogan lines, like this one from “Better”
“They said you'd never get anywhere,
Well they don't care and it's just not fair”
This doesn’t deserve anything lower than a 2 simply because it’s a fun album. Yes its mediocre, outdated and laughably bad, but there’s a sense of fun and energy that runs throughout it. It’s a throwback to the days when rock music was used as an excuse for the population to get out, dance and have fun. You can’t criticise it for that, and if you do it just means you’ve forgotten what it was like back in those days.
