One day, maybe in a decade or three, somebody will dig this LP out of the future virtual version of a record crate in a Salvation Army and be blown away by the deep grooves this supergroup generate — sort of the way I was when I first heard West, Bruce & Lang’s Why Dontcha. In the here and now, however, an excitable rock fan who drops the needle on this debut by a supergroup drawn from members of Led Zeppelin, Foo Fighters, and Queens of the Stone Age will probably be disappointed by how ho-hum it is.
The release is not without brief visits to riff heaven, and it’s in the details that there are pleasures to be found, whether that’s John Paul Jones’s “Custard Pie” bass in “Scumbag Blues” or the whiff of Aerosmith’s “Rag Doll” in the sleazy melody of “New Fang.” But too often you bop along to the tight drum/bass syncopations only to forget what you’re listening to — or worse, why.
