Fun fact: I went to the same college as Kasabian... albeit a few years after they had left but nonetheless, still quite cool that I'm from the same place as a significantly large band. Everyone I went to school with absolutely idolised them, me... I just always thought they were average. Their debut album was incredible and I'll forever love that album, but everything since that just hasn't been up to that par in my opinion. For Crying Out Loud is their sixth studio album after 2014's terribly mediocre 48:13. This album has supposedly been heavily influenced by Bowie, Nirvana, Springsteen and Claudio Ranieri. I think this is just pillow talk to create hype, although there are some essences of influencing from Leicester City's phenomenal title winning season last year.
The album opens with ill Ray (The King), it's a decent tune with Tom's melodic rock voice really opening up. And the lyrical content is about an up and coming band and people treating them as underdogs. I think this is where the comparisons and metaphors to Leicester start, because they've taken that story and translated it into a small band who only dream of being 'king for a day'. Something I notice on this album is that Serge has taken on a lot more responsibility as the songwriter and has done an excellent job. There are much better lyrics and song-writing on show here than their previous 2/3 albums combined. Whilst EEZ-EH is a great single, I can't help but feel it's just a desperate attempt at staying up to date instead of being left out in the cold. However, Kasabian have said screw that on this album and it's obvious they have made a record that they wanted to make. The first single from this album is next on the album, You're In Love With A Psycho. This is an absolutely phenomenally good tune! With a different mood to most Kasabian songs, with a more emotionally influenced bridge as Tom sings "it just don't mean a thing" and then the chorus kicks in with harmonies in the background of the chorus constantly. Whilst the song isn't that deep or emotionally contrived, it's just a feel-good, hair down tune.
The B-Side to this song however, Are You Looking For Some Action?, is arguably the worst song I've heard this year. 8 straight minutes of played out beats, and then ear bleeding squealing for a good minute at the end, even though it actually felt like 10. Ever since my first listen I genuinely can't bring myself to listen to this song all the way through again because then that would 16 minutes of my life lost. I don't know who let Kasabian play for that long a song, it switches up so many times that you could have made this into about 5 different interludes! I challenge to put this song on and just skip every 1 minute of the song, and you each time is completely different to any of the others. Bless This Acid House is what Serge described as the "best song I've ever written" he could not be more wrong, this doesn't even have a patch on the first 6 songs on this album, let alone the rest of their discography. Which brings me onto the utterly uneven weighting of the album, the first 6 tracks, until after Comeback Kid, are brilliant. They contain that classic Kasabian charm and wit with songs that you can just imagine screaming back to them in a stadium. However, after that it's like they just gave up because the other 6 songs on the album, they're not good, at all.
Comeback Kid is a great song though, absolutely loved this song ever since I heard it on the Fifa 17 soundtrack. It's one of them songs that makes you just went want to get up and do some sort of Rocky montage to it, it's got some fantastic Guitar playing in it and that goes for the rest of the album aswell. Serge really outdid himself on that front. There's some brilliant nothingness lyrics in this song like "Sasquatch in a binbag" which Serge even said he can "imagine on T-Shirts" so keep checking their merch for that one. Overall though, this album seems like it's been slapped together because they realised it had been three years since the last one and people outside of Leicester were starting to forget about them, some of the songs on here are either boring or awful and I think at this point in their career that Kasabian should really be aiming to produce potential classics rather than crowd-pleasing big 'tunes'.
4/10