Artist: Kottak
Label: SAOL Music
Release: 2011
Length: 32:16
Rating: 2.5/5
James Kottak is the drummer of the legendary Scorpions. The man is living his dream and doesn’t want to hide it, nor could he. A lucky guy who got his chops through stints in bands like Montrose, The Cult, MSG (the Robin McAuley version), Kingdom Come and Warrant, he joined the unbreakable German hard rock fortress in 1996, whose story has since grown into a full-blown music legend.
“Attack” is the hedonistic follow-up to what Kottak was already doing on “Rock N’ Roll Forever”. Party rock n’ roll with a dirty accent, tuned solely to the frequency of total fun and games for its target audience. It’s laced with punk, in which it’s not hard to pick out the trendy, cheerfully poppy influences of everyone from Green Day to Blink 182. Add a dab of Kiss-style glam makeup and the whole thing is pretty much set in concrete.
The funny thing is that at 49, Kottak remains an incorrigible kid. You’d think the guy would want some more original adventures for his golden years, but he’s clearly more than happy to keep riding the clichés.
“Attack” is the album of an old fart who roars at the top of his lungs that he’s definitely not written off yet, and that teenage potency, hooliganism and a dogged streak of all-around disobedience are still boiling inside him. A midlife crisis cry, you could call it. Banal lyrics, banally constructed songs, full of trivial restraint and stiffly inflexible rock n’ roll templates .
The songs are compact, put together without any high-flying “Einstein-esque” stuff, played in the studio completely first-take, and as such, in their simplicity and predictability, they hit the sweet spot of punchiness and instant, grabby melodic seduction. They also carry power, a raw and rowdy production, just as this kind of naked rock n’ roll rush demands. Of course, there’s so much cliché gloss slathered over everything that across a measly 32 minutes of music the listener keeps tripping over gags à la Ramones, Green Day, Kiss, Motley Crue,… which is not exactly the best send-off for “Attack”.
“Attack” is an album James Kottak made in the spirit of personal release, strictly for the soul, strictly for his own enjoyment. It’s a positive-minded album of heartfelt rock n’ roll debauchery, whose predictability and at times MTV-flavored, fashionably skater-kid punk veneer come across as pushy rather than natural. Simply because James is an old-school musician, and his oddness is carved into the groove of cheerfully carefree MTV-ism (which has been selling the masses “fake” punk for well over a decade now), it doesn’t bring the kind of points that would convince anyone Kottak are serious about their product.
Going forward, it would be far more fitting for James and the gang to flirt more seriously with their glam rock roots and strike the cheerful punk skating from their musical vocabulary altogether, since the new generation pulls it off far more convincingly. Kottak will have a hard time defending themselves with the argument that they just got off their chest the album that happened to be weighing on their soul at that moment. From a musical talent who has racked up as much mileage as James Kottak, you simply expect more expressive insight and artistic substance than boyish playing in a sandbox.
This review was created in collaboration between RockLine and Rock Hard Slovenija.
Lineup
James Kottak – vocals, guitar
Tommy Henriksen – guitar, bass guitar, programming
Johnny Lucas – guitar
Price Vernon – bass guitar
Francis Ruiz – drums
Production
Tommy Henriksen
Tracklist
1. Teenage Kix
2. Scandalous
3. Hit The Heartbreakers
4. Let’s Do It Tonight
5. Sexy Motherfucker
6. Perfect Defects
7. Bang Bang Baby
8. World War Love
9. So Disconnected
10. Time TO Say Goodbye
