In Your Honour [2CD] - Foo Fighters

One of my favourites

I love this album! At first I thought the second cd was boring, but after having heard it a few more times I liked it more and more, and now I think I like the quiet one even better than the loud one. I love the melodies and the calm sound, it`s great!

Just ignore the dull 2nd cd and you've got a first-class album

The 1st cd is full of energy, thought and emotion, expertly crafted and never repetitive. The 2nd cd is quiet and boring and forgettable. However, this does not mean that the album overall is bad, as there is no compulsion to listen to the 2nd one and I've often forgotten that there is one as the first cd is so damned good!

Slightly disappointing departure from a winning formula

There is a saying: if something isn't broke, don't fix it. Unfortunately the Foo Fighters have dramatically departed from their highly successful and enjoyable usual style of music in order to explore more acoustic, slow music. A few experimental tracks like this would be okay, but the band have badly overdone it, and as a result, the band's usual fan base will not enjoy this album. The album is slightly saved by the excellent tracks "DOA" and "In your Honour", but apart from that, I would recommend you give this a miss if you are a genuine fan (you can always download the two better tracks on iTunes or equivalent, which is cheaper than buying the whole mediocre album), but it may appeal to you if you are a fan of slow acoustic guitar.

2 discs is great if they are full of great songs...

Sadly this album like most foos albums is more miss than hit. Tracks like DOA and best of you are really good, sadly I can scarcely remember the others. Don't get me wrong I do like the band, I just find the inconsistancy of the albums frustrating.

John Kerry would be proud to have inspired this...

The first song sounds like Ned's Atomic Dustbin. This is not always a good thing. That said, the rest of it doesn't. Like other Foo Fighters albums, "In Your Honor" sound like the work of a thoroughly nice bloke who likes rockin'. The problem here, as always, is that whenever Dave Grohl can fulfill the promise of his work, the mind-crunching riffola of Black Sabbath covering The Beatles, he still sounds as if he's faking being the baddest bad-ass rocker ever.

No doubt Grohl is a stupendous musician. One of the best drummers on the planet, and an excellent guitarist and songwriter, who singlehandedly elevated Nirvana from being promising to perfect, and the current, definitive Foos lineup is an excellent collection of musicians that will probably remain for years, and "In Your Honor", well, it ain't all that.

It has fanastic songs. "The Best Of You" singlehandedly destroys the lie that Kurt was the brains behind Nirvana, and the rest of the first half of the album, a slew of crunching rawk monsters is as good as anything else the Foos have done. "No Way Back" practically enviserates the souls of lesser bands and eats them for breakfast. But "In Your Honor" is not an unqualified success, being a monochrome set of moods. With 10 RAAAWK songs and 10 acoustic strums, it's all light and shade.

Halfway through it suddenly takes a radical left turn to become a set of largely homogenic acoustic numbers. Shorn of the variety of quiet/loud to a more limited palette of quiet, Grohl's abilities become focused on a smaller picture, which brings out the limitations of his talents. Simply put, the acoustic disc sounds like one long acoustic number that fails to really shine. There are some fabulous songs there ("Friend of a Friend") but by and large, it's a second disc of mellow b-sides that really should've been integrated into the body of the main set and trimmed to create a more cohesive record.

As it stands, "In Your Honor" is an almost schizophrenic, somewhat flawed, wonderful experiment. It is however, excellent value for money which offers a kaleidoscope of styles and expands The Foo's palette to something which promises a whole new world for them to explore. To the future, and now!