Henry Rollins sure gets around these days. When he's not a touring

machine with his Rollins Band, he's flying off to New York to shoot a

couple of days with Al Pacino on some movie. Then it's off halfway

around the world for a GAP shoot. Then it's back to the states to work

with David Lynch or Charlie Sheen. What a jet setter.

Now what, you ask, does any of this have to do with the new album by

the Rollins Band? All of the information in the opening paragraph was

derived from the always entertaining "Band Bio" sheet that came with the

album (Well, not the GAP part. That was my own little dig). Reading the

"bio", I knew that something was a little strange. It was all first

person very general, very vague histories of Rollins' life. Having read

some of the author's books in the past, it hit me: Henry wrote this. Now

this is only significant because usually, these band bios are written by

some shmo's over at the record label. But I guess when you're a

"writer," and in a band, you can write your own little press releases.

By now, I suppose enough people have called Rollins a sellout that I

don't have to expound on it too much. Nonetheless, one can only infer

that the inclusion of these little details about starring in movies and

all the name dropping can only further Rollins' career as a "sellout"

since: (A) His movies and his music have nothing to do with each other,

and (B) He is a terrible actor who usually stars in shitty movies.

The point of all this is that if Dreamworks, and every other record

label, simply sent out their artist's music-- and let it stand on its

own-- DJs and critics would probably be much more objective about the

music than when they are given useless hype and jive talk, disguised as

"information". Now to prove this point, we must move on to the music

that accompanied the band bio and cute little glossy photo of the band.

Now one can probably gather from the introduction of this review, that

the author does not care for Mr. Rollins that much. This is, in fact,

correct. I was looking forward to reviewing this album so I could rip on

how much the new Rollins Band album sucks, but I'm not really going to

get to do that, because for the most part, Come In and Burn is a

surprisingly solid album.

From the opening track, "Shame," and all throughout the remaining fifty

minutes, the album generally rocks. Their sound is very heavy, crisp and

well produced. They make their guitars sound like big engines and these

"engines" are backed by a powerful, tight and even grooving rhythm

section. It seems that every musician in the Rollins Band is better than

Henry, who doesn't even play an instrument, for that matter. So why is

it called the Rollins Band? You're gonna have to figure that one on your

own.

The music on Come In and Burn is hard to categorize. It's not punk.

It's not metal, and it's not quite "rock". If this were the '80s, they

would probably end up getting lumped with the "funk/thrash" guys. Now

their music isn't all that original, but considering the competition out

there these days, anything half-decent starts to sound good. The music

seems like it would make great background music for a soundtrack or

something. Maybe Rollins will combine his two "careers" and become like

that guy from Oingo Boingo or Mark Knopfler and start

doing soundtracks exclusively. Ha!

The moods swing from riffing metal to slow grooving jazz, if you can

imagine. On "During a City," it is almost like Rollins is in his own

personal Las Vegas Lounge, as the ride cymbals gently ting and Melvin

Gibbs' bass churns out swinging, jazzy beats. Maybe it's lounge-core.

Maybe not.

Most of the songs are like the track "Starve" with its blues-metal

hooks and solid drumming, compounded with Rollins' yelling. Throughout

the album, I tried to ignore what he was singing about, it made the

music much more enjoyable. So if you want insight into the lyrics, go

read another review.

"Neon" is another stylistic challenge, as they lounge it up for a few

bars before drowning in slow grunge chords and letting guitarist Chris

Haskett solo off into the stratosphere like he were Josh Homme or Carlos

Santana. But for the most part, they pull it off.

Despite Rollins' macho trip and his self loathing rants, the other four

musicians who contributed to this album did a very good job. Melvin

Gibbs' bass playing was extraordinary, and that probably has something

to do with whatever Theo Van Rock, the "low end ranger", tweaks out on

his sound boards. They get quite psychedelic sometimes, in a

Sabbath/Soundgarden sort of way. Drummer Sim Cain is solid and has his

share of fills throughout the album. And since Rollins apparently wrote

all of these songs, I suppose he deserves some credit as a songwriter.

He just needs to shut up more often.