Band : Queen and Paul Rodgers

Album Title : The Cosmos Rocks

Label : EMI

Distributor : EMI

Release Date : 03 / 10 / 2008

Release : CD

Brian May and Roger Taylor have every right to go on tour and play their old hits despite the great lost of front man Freddie Mercury. The hired former Bad Company vocalist Paul Rodgers to replace him but the former band members of Queen must know that this will sound as a whole new band, especially when you listen to this album “The Cosmos Rocks”. This album sounds almost nothing like Queen. The songs are coloured heavily by Rodgers’ old-school British blues, both lyrically and vocally. The end result is basically a mediocre Bad Company record. Where Queen was known for endless layers of sound and a fair amount of brazen experimentation Queen and Paul Rodgers is just a simple rock band. The songs the band wrote for “The Cosmos Rocks” are rather stupid and it unfortunately reflects the overall tone of the album as a whole.

The song “War Boys” inserts a bunch of battlefield sound effects like planes, gunfire and explosions to make  sure what the song was about. And “Surf’s Up…School’s Out” does contain several shouts of ‘yeah!’ and is really disturbing. This collection adds nothing to Queen’s legacy. This time they really fucked up and hopefully they continue in the near future as a cover band of old Queen songs.

60/100

Guido Claes.