Tenacious D return with their third album full of all of what you would expect and more. The cover art of Rize Of The Fenix looks like a doodle out of the scrapbook of any kid with obsessive compulsive penis drawing disorder, the phallic imagery is very prominent. The band are once again taking the mickey.
The album begins with its title track, a catchy epic which will have fans singing along to for years to come, a song about the band rising from the ashes like a phoenix. Accompanied by its video it is a powerful satire of the music industry.
Fenix shows a return to the audio skits heard in their debut album. These provide more comic relief and poke fun at rock.
A favourite track is “Throw down”, which lyrically takes on a religious theme. Usually the combination of comedy and religion is unstable territory, but the D manage to pull it off creating an awesome track that fails to offend.The album’s high points are Jack’s range of singing, which crosses a range of genre, from singing in Spanglish, to blues, to the style of a romantic ballad. Jack’s lyrics—the highlight being ‘Rock is dead’, a blues song containing a brief rock history “Beatles arrive, started a trend, Axl Rose, give me some head”—and Kyle’s consistently great guitar playing which matches genre’s as easily as Jack’s voice, Kyle’s backup vocal’s throughout the album are the perfect accompaniment, taking all songs a step higher.
If you are new to Tenacious D just beware of the vulgar content, one image I didn’t want to imagine was set in my head in
the lyric “When we text each other, I fiddle with my anus” which by itself just a disturbing image, but in the context of “39” a satirical love song it is spot on humour. Anyone who is already a fan of Tenacious D will love the album, enjoying each song as it takes a different genre and uses its conventions to create satirical gold.