Music Reviews

Revelations Epic/Interscope Music •••½ Sound ••••

On its third album, Audioslave sounds well settled into life as the hard-rock behemoth it has been since 2002 - when ex-Soundgardener Chris Cornell, rather than trying to replace singer Zach de la Rocha in Rage Against the Machine, instead successfully merged his grungy brooding with their metallic brawn. Highlighted by the urban-playground-as-battleground "Sound of a Gun" and the Katrina/Iraq-referencing "Wide Awake," Revelations finds Tom Morello's wrenching guitar, Tim Commerford's probing bass, and Brad Wilk's thunderdome drums providing scope and dimension to Cornell's I-live-therefore-I-hurt lyrics and yowls. In a word: sobering.

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