Heart On

On their third album, the duo are as danceable as ever, but they've tiptoed away from straight musical pastiche, crudding up their blues boogie with low-fi fuzziness and oddball percussion.

QOTSA may be rock at the edge of the abyss, but Heart On vaults right over, taking flight on an updraft of woozy audacity and shuddering riffs.

Fans of the goofy rock send-ups Hughes and Homme did on "Peace Love Death Metal" and "Death by Sexy" might think the pair are taking themselves too seriously here, but they add just enough maturity to the mix to make Heart On a consistently great album.

The tracks on Heart On don't veer from EoDM's favored subjects of Los Angeles fakery, sex, girls, sexy girls, and how they're gonna get sexy girls. But shit, that doesn't matter because they're sure as hell sticking to what they do best (with their trusty cow-bell, no less): they make you want to rock out and get your sleazy dance-on at some greasy bar with a PBR.

All round, a party atmosphere prevails--and undoubtedly a good time is had by all.

This album knows how to party; it rocks like a beast.

Heart On does reveal a slightly maturing sense of pop songcraft from Hughes and Homme.

With his buddy Josh Homme from Queens of the Stone Age, Hughes gets the details right all over Heart On.

The songs themselves live in the present--and live all over the place.

Ocasionally, the shtick does wear a little thin and they lope off towards water-treading mid-pace. The line between parody and genius is always going to be fine.

Eagles Of Death Metal have crafted a soundtrack to hedonism, a series of paeans to earthly and earthy pleasures and deliciously illicit behaviour. It's enormous fun all right but it's a long way from being a joke.

The third album of the formula, the lovely-titled Heart On, shows that the Eagles of Death Metal have reached their limits, but not without a noble effort to keep on rockin’.

Heart On is on par with the band's previous efforts when it comes to ultra-swarthy innuendos. [Dec 2008, p.146]

The duo’s third LP won’t reconcile the two camps; in fact, Heart On may be the first EODM album to really make the detractors’ case. Chugging riffs and falsetto vocals abound on these 12 tracks, but instead of indulging whatever black magic that kept 2004’s "Peace Love Death Metal" and 2006’s "Death By Sexy" from devolving into jokey karaoke, Hughes and Homme decide to play it mostly straight.

Aside from being completely disposable, Heart On isn’t quite a bad album.

Their third album is more highly evolved than what normally constitutes straight up good-time rock. [Feb 2009, p.105]

The first half of Heart On is a heroically hedonistic party, but it's the subsequent comedown that, inevitable, lingers longer. [Feb 2009, p.113]