It slices! It dices! It makes french fries three different ways!
OK, I was just kidding about the french fries.
And the slicing and dicing.
But seriously, folks, it's starting to seem like Dave Grohl is a rock and roll Swiss Army Knife, the sort of miracle worker over which the late night infomercial crew would go totally wild. Every time he bends over, a new instrument comes out of his backside.
Grohl started by turning the D.C. punk scene upside down with Scream and soon proceeded to drape every white teenager in the country in flannel by way of Nirvana. Following the mess that came of that one, he emerged as a leading force in modern rock with his Foo Fighters. And his recent assumption of the Queens of the Stone Age as temporary protégés resulted in their best album to date and brought them more critical acclaim than they knew what to do with. The guy's resume must read like a Grammy ballot.
The most recent blade to unfold on us is Probot, a metal side project concocted with former Zwan guitarist Matt Sweeney.
When I say "metal," I really mean it. I don't mean Disturbed, I don't mean Staind, and I sure as hell don't mean Linkin Park. We're talking In Flames, Danzig and Slayer here. Whatever you want to make of this thing in the end, it certainly isn't a marketing ploy because it's not going to sell very well. This is metal for long-haired, dangerous headbangers, not metal for brooding teenagers wearing spiky dog collars.
Curiously enough, it's still very Dave Grohl at times. A lot of the riffs sound like they might have been culled from the scraps of tape left over after the last Foo Fighters album, cast aside because they were just a little too dark and heavy for what was already destined to be a darker, heavier album than anything the band had put out before. Foo Fighters producer Adam Kasper also turns up for Probot, and things can get to be quite disorienting when a track is mixed like a poppy Foo Fighters ditty but involves an obscure 1980s black metal singer shrieking "Comfort me and my tortured soul!"
Part of this project's strength lies in the fact that it doesn't try too hard to be serious. It comes across as hokey at times; no mostly-sentient being could possibly give any sort of respect to lines like "I am the warlock!" and "They started to die/but not fast enough/so they shot at each other/with bullets and stuff." The idiocy is further heightened by a host of singers who sometimes render the songs with grotesque timbres that make you wonder whether your grimace is supposed to be sympathetic toward their throats or one's own ears. That said, they don't all necessarily cause self-involved trainwrecks: Brazilian metal figurehead Max Cavalera makes an appearance on the September-11th-but-not-really "Red War," and the jackhammer he brings with him makes for the album's most appealing performance, both vocally and otherwise.
With a different vocalist guest starring on each track, it can be hard to see this as coherent. Some of them are more active participants, but a good number of them seem to think that their status as Big Scary Heavy Metal Singers will be enough to carry them through the project. The aforementioned Grohl-ness is noticeable when it kicks in, but it's not present on enough of the songs to turn this sample platter into a meal. It seems like the common thread tying these songs together is their proximity to "The last thing I was expecting from Dave Grohl."
OK, I was just kidding about that last bit. I'll save that line for the remix album.
Jack White might not be too pleased to hear this, but there's little doubt that Dave is far and away the most influential figure produced by rock music in the last 10 years. The funny thing about the Probot album is that it makes it clear why that is the case without itself being a reason for it. It isn't so much a great record as it is a whimsical example of a great musician wearing another of his many hats.
Is there anything he can't do?
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