Kasabian: Empire : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

Make a photocopy of a photocopy of a photocopy of the past forty years of British rock and you're still not even close to how removed the artless pastiche of Kasabian is from the magic of their Led Zeppelin-Faces-Oasis-Primal Scream forefathers. The second album by these Leicester uberlads is miles worse than their shallow but tasty first, its big-budget production only making its shortcomings more apparent. "Apnoea" sports a turgid hyperspeed drum loop and a one-note bass line, thus providing a spot-on simulation of being trapped in a K hole. "By My Side" goes so far as to steal its tune from Lita Ford's "Kiss Me Deadly." All eyes are now on singer Tom Meighan, who combines a stunningly limited vocal range with a melodic sensibility that makes nursery rhymes seem complex by comparison, all in the service of lyrics like this one from the cod-glam stomp "Shoot the Runner": "I'm a king and she's my queen . . . bitch!" The emperor clearly wears no clothes.