Lucky me, there was a question on my local Top 40/Hard Rock radio station this morning about "Mean" Joe Greene and the Pittsburgh Steelers...I correctly answered the question and won a brand new shiny Audioslave CD. Picked it up on my way to work!

I'll be the first to admit I'm not a big fan of these guys...in my youth I was into the whole Seattle scene back in its heyday, and I've always respected the funky edgy musicianship of Rage Against the Machine - but I've sort of moved on long since these guys got together, even if they were a somewhat interesting blend for their first album.

Out of Exile starts off rather slow, sounding like most other RATM albums as far as instruments go, and Chris Cornell sounding like Chris Cornell. The 1st track and 3rd track are probably destined for singles (if one of them is, I apologize, haven't heard yet). Pretty decent radio-friendly hard rock.

What surprised me is how the band is actually exploring a few new things musically. They seem to really have found an identity now instead of just being the RATM guys and that Soundgarden dude. More slower songs, some solo's, not the typical "attack-funk-wah-repeat" formula that got stale with Rage Against the Machine.
Unlike most albums, I find this actually is back-end loaded, the songs seem to get stronger as the album plays on. Nice touch.

This is a much more cohesive piece of work than Audioslave's self-titled debut, not a bad freebie at all!

Nothing absolutely spectacular here but if you're a fan of either of RATM or Soundgarden, or just liked the first Audioslave album, go ahead and get this. If you didn't like any of these guys, there's probably not much new here for you to get into, even if it is a better effort this time around. This is a really solid hard-rock album that sounds different than the typical cowboy-growling Creed/Seether/Nickelback/Theory of Deadman stuff that we've been stuck with for the last 5 years or so.

I'll give it a solid B rating. Fans of the 3 groups might actually like this a lot more than I do.