CD review: Buckcherry ~ All Night Long

Buckcherry ~ All Night Long (Eleven Seven Music)

Released: Aug. 3, 2010

On August 3, Buckcherry released All Night Long, the follow-up to 2008′s masterpiece Black Butterfly. Just like their first four records, All Night Long takes us back to an era when you could listen to a rock and roll album from start to finish and not find a bad track in the bunch. The CD contains 11 tracks, and absolutely not a moment of filler. If you like AC/DC, Aerosmith, Guns N’ Roses (before Axl went Nine Inch Nails on us), or Motley Crue, there’s no reason for you to not pick up this album.

The CD starts out with the title cut, “All Night Long”, which would’ve fit in any hair metal bar on the Sunset Strip in 1988, but still sounds perfectly relevant today. Buckcherry’s album sales and concert attendance proves that in a world of emo, pop, teenage megastars, and even heavier darker metal, the world still wants its good old-fashioned party rock…Loud guitars, good vocals, a good beat, and lyrics about women and partying are still what we all crave.

Mixed in with the AC/DC-style rockers such as “All Night Long”, “Oh My Lord”, “Recovery”, and “Dead” are slower, more intricate songs such as “These Things”, “Bliss”, and the classic-style power ballad “I Want You”. And though most of the songs are, frankly, about wild times, women and relationships, and hard partying, the fairly serious “Our World” fits like a glove amongst the other songs. With a classic hard rock musical style, the lyrics portray something that the band has mostly avoided… It discusses in plain English, all of the tragedy and senseless violence going on in this world, and reminds us that it’s all of our responsibility to do what we can as individuals, and as a society, to fix it. Josh Todd’s lyrics remind us that for now, this is the only world we have, and we’d better clean up our act if we want it to be around for our kids.

Overall, this is probably the most solid hard rock record I’ve heard this year. Expect it to stay in the Hot 100 charts on Billboard, and to be labeled as one of the top rock releases of 2010. I definitely look forward to seeing Buckcherry perform these songs live. Catch them this summer on the Carnival of Madness tour, as well as on dates with Nickelback, Alice Cooper, and Aerosmith.

For a bit more insight into the record, listen to the interview Metalholic.com/Mojoradio.us’s own Rustyn Rose and myself did with Buckcherry guitarist Keith Nelson.

Rating: 9.5/10