(EMI)

Everything louder than everything else, to everything’s detriment

You almost have to commend a band for making such a strident commitment in aping their heroes, again and again over an album’s duration. Almost. If Warnambool quartet Airbourne were honest, and just called their sophomore release what it really was (an AC/DC tribute album) they may have earned my praise. All the ingredients are there, from the uber macho song titles (Born To Kill, Steel Town, Overdrive et al) to the parodying cover art (including a girl in bikinis, factory workers and trucks crashing into barricades) and Joel O’Keefe’s squealing guitar trills that want to be Angus Young so hard it hurts. If nothing else, Airbourne know their audience. Except this is not a tribute show at a local RSL... Even within the narrow confines of hard rock & roll, their follow-up to 2007’s Runnin’ Wild finds the band making a mess of even the most resilient clichés. It’s proud, it’s certainly loud from minute one to 46, but even Bon Scott and Brian Johnson occasionally swayed from self-aggrandising statements about their sexual or masculine prowess. Not often, but just enough to bring different shades of colour to a successful formula. When Airbourne’s first album was released to modest murmurs of excitement, the band seemed to spend an overabundant amount of time distancing themselves from the obvious influences of their hard rocking forebears. At the time this wasn’t a smart move, and wiser pundits would have suggested that the band embraced the comparisons. But No Guts. No Glory. is the sound of a band who have moved from harmless fanboy adoration to stalker obsession.

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MITCH ALEXANDER

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