There’s a fine line between resilience and stubbornness. Resilience is about preservation in the face of adversity – the tireless refinement of your skill set to improve and resist decay. Stubbornness has no such dignity. It’s self-serving, hollow and ultimately futile. Braver Than We Are is the latter: a twisted mangle of formulaic misfires where Jim Steinman lazily reheats past glories and Meat Loaf tragically shreds his remaining legacy bashing them together.
The snide scene-setter Who Needs The Young opens with an acidic hypocrisy, childishly snapping at those who accuse him of creative stagnation while simultaneously proving their point. In a complete backflip of his earlier stance that celebrated youthful rebellion, Loaf becomes the very pig-headed curmudgeon he fought without a lick of self-awareness. Artists age, but they also evolve, while retaining that fundamental fire (See: Johnny Cash). Loaf’s vocal power has devolved into a trickling, passionless mockery.
Both Stienman and Loaf have consistently delivered kooky theatrics with an infectious gusto for decades. This album, however, is bleakly sterile – an unjustifiable Frankenstienian monster of mythological tropes stitched into saccharine ballads. The unsustainably self indulgent Going All The Way Is Just The Start (A Song In 6 Movements) runs 11 minutes and 28 seconds, sporadically dipping into paper-thin representations of gothic thematics and power rock dramatics without dredging substance.
Loaf trundles through the painfully flat Only When I Feel and Skull of Your Country apes Total Eclipse Of The Heart with an undigestably-patriotic belch. Stienman’s back-catalog covers add nothing; More’s industrial-esque guitar coughing fits are laughable and Loving You’s A Dirty Job (But Somebody’s Gotta Do It) force what sounds like toy keyboard presets and Kelly Clarkson into a disgustingly safe pop spew.
Vacuous and directionless, Braver Than We Are is shamefully fearful. It’s an obstinate refusal to provide anything new that also fails to provide nostalgic comfort with its inferior, rehashed aesthetic. Unacceptable.
BY JACOB COLLIVER
