Battle For The Sun

The result is Placebo's best album since 1998's magisterial "Without You I'm Nothing." [Jul 2009, p.97]

[The album’s final track is] a satisfying conclusion to the band’s best album since 2000’s Black Market Music.

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.

The band has made records more appealingly outré than this one. Raise the freak flag higher, dudes!

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.

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.

The album may revive the band's career in North America, but for many of their loyal fans it will come as a major disappointment.

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.

The 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]

A heavier take on their gothic moan-rock.

Battle 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.

Lacking 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.

Too many songs are full of bombast and bland angst, as if these smart guys know better but can't help themselves.

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.

The 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]