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Battle For The Sun takes the best elements of thier sound and focuses it into a cohesive listening experience--there's no filler to be found. [Jul 2009, p.130]
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80The result is Placebo's best album since 1998's magisterial "Without You I'm Nothing." [Jul 2009, p.97]
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[The album’s final track is] a satisfying conclusion to the band’s best album since 2000’s Black Market Music.
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Producer David Bottrill (King Crimson, Tool, Muse) gives Battle for the Sun a lean, sharp sound, stripping away a lot of the synthetic weight that bulked up the group's last few albums.
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The band has made records more appealingly outré than this one. Raise the freak flag higher, dudes!
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The threesome, along with Tool-producer Dave Bottrill, deliver a brightly focused, 13-track collection that hard-core fans will pan and newbies will adore.
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It’s true that in parts Battle For The Sun, Placebo’s [sixth] studio album, will give the open-minded/easily-fooled aspartame butterflies in the stomach, methadone iris dilation and nicotine-patch heart tremors.
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Battle for the Sun, the band's sixth album and first with drummer Steve Forrest, is given a steel-reinforced production by David Bottrill, a sound that could conceivably be placed on mainstream rock radio if that format still existed, or if it were used as a vehicle for something else than Placebo's music, which remains resolutely pitched toward a niche audience, no matter how many little frills of horns or farting synths grace their guitar grind.
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60The bulk is what Placebo term "hard pop": lean, muscular movers shot through with melody. As unfashionable as it may be to say so, there aren't many bands that do it better. [July 2009]
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60The album may revive the band's career in North America, but for many of their loyal fans it will come as a major disappointment.
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A heavier take on their gothic moan-rock.
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60Battle clearly illustrates efforts at sounding new, and undecided listeners may wonder why those efforts bore sweet moments with little resonance, a sugar pill for Placebo’s new era.
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Too many songs are full of bombast and bland angst, as if these smart guys know better but can't help themselves.
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50Lacking lyrics as memorable as 2006's "Meds," Battle for the Sun is heavier but duller, with the gap between Molko's spindly melodies and the fatter, newly Americanized riffs widening.
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Battle For The Sun feels hazy, lazy and lost--a muggy summer afternoon. Predictable lyrics grate awkwardly like manufactured pop-factory produce, while a ‘nice’ helping of sunshine-synth and sighs paint a chirpy celebration of life and all its hand-clappy beauty. Meh.
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40The band utilise new instruments--saxophone, brass and more--in a too-blantant attempt to convince us that they are more than goths. [Aug 2009, p.101]
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34They've jettisoned just about anything that ever made them perversely enjoyable.