Outta The Ashes

Tenacious D
Rize of the Fenix


Tenacious D are crude, crass, funnier than that fat kid with the lightsaber (look the champ up on YouTube) and a music sideshow that’ve, since Day One, piggybacked on Jack Black’s film success. They’re also, as Rize of the Fenix proves, the hardest rockin’ muthafuckas this side of … this side of … hmmm …  Sonic Death Monkey?

Metal has always been a bit stupid, yet the only guys who’ve appeared to understand that and appeared willing to slosh about the pigsty of face-melting axe solos are Jack Black and Kyle Gass. Now 42 and 51 respectively and family men, the duo are still shit hot.

Fenix opens with the balls-to-the-wall title track which at once sounds like Dio, Wishbone Ash, Judas Priest and nothing you’ve ever heard. And that’s only the tip of the motherfuckin’ iceberg.

Low Hangin’ Fruit is on par with the funniest cuts off of The D’s 2001 debut (except maybe Fuck Her Gently); Roadie is The Road, part deux; Throw Down is the most religious rock since Superstar (the Andrew Lloyd Webber-Tim Rice one from the JCS play, not the Bonnie Bramlett-Leon Russell one made famous by the Carpenters), and To Be the Best is an Eye of the Tiger pastiche that’s way funnier than watching grown men in too-short shorts beating up one another as they train to fight Clubber Lang.

The album’s centrepiece though is The Ballad of Hollywood Jack and the Rage Kage, a song that pastes a JB-doing-Tom Waits-doing-Lenny Bruce vocal onto a KG-realised Jimmy Page-inspired acoustic opus complete with guitar noodling and Stairway flutes. Brilliant!

Oh and in case anyone’s asking, all the drums on Fenix were recorded by the chappie who used to play for Nirvana.