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- Critic score
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- By date
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Q MagazineJan 27, 2014Occasionally frustrating and sometimes even a little soapy, Mechanical Bull has its flaws, but it also brims with personality and passion. [Oct 2013, p.104]
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MagnetOct 18, 2013All in all, the best return to original form a stadium band can risk these days. [No. 103, p.57]
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Oct 4, 2013Mechanical Bull kicks up a tightly controlled disc that still leaves enough roots unpolished.
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Sep 30, 2013For the first time in a while, they’re moving forward with a sound truer to their nature.
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Sep 27, 2013Though they may have felt immense pressure to replicate the monster hits that have come to be expected of them, the band have struck proper middle ground between the jaggedy, bluesy Southern rock of their early years with more polished commercial anthems.
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Sep 26, 2013Mechanical Bull won’t make everyone happy, but the Followills have come back after a booze-and-burnout sabbatical sounding not just refreshed but enriched. And that’s more than good enough.
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Sep 26, 2013Mechanical Bull is adequate arena rock, a collection of songs fit to play on Guitar Hero.
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Sep 24, 2013At its best, Mechanical Bull is standard, paint-by-numbers fare that attempts to sprint to the finish line. However, it runs out of gas and you have to wonder if Kings of Leon have as well.
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Sep 24, 2013Mechanical Bull is the sound of a band reviving its former selves for the benefit of each other and for their longtime fans, and it’s their best album since Aha Shake Heartbreak.
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Sep 24, 2013Unfortunately, they miss and it lands in the five-day-old dregs of a keg in an Anytown, USA backyard.
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Sep 24, 2013The three brothers and a cousin reconnect the dots of their career and interrelationships in an impressively catchy set of 11 songs.
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Sep 24, 2013It was cool for them to sound effortless while channeling the dark-side-of-fame turmoil--and the Followills are still skilled crowd-pleasers--but on this record, they sound weary even when they aren’t trying.
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Sep 24, 2013Although their sixth album hardly feels like a comedown, or an apology, it's loose and down-to-earth; you can imagine them bashing it out in a shed, albeit a very large one.
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Sep 23, 2013The best parts of Mechanical Bull, its sixth album, come when that exhaustion seeps into the songwriting and playing.
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Sep 23, 2013Mechanical Bull is the sound of Kings of Leon de-fanged, de-crowned, and de-throned, further evidence of their inexorable slide towards artistic irrelevance.
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Sep 23, 2013It'll do for a fleeting one-night stand, but Mechanical Bull isn't the rekindling of a romance that we'd hoped for.
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Sep 23, 2013Having grabbed their career by the horns with Mechanical Bull, it's clear that Kings of Leon aren't letting it get away from them anytime soon.
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Sep 23, 2013Whatever they say, this isn’t the “comeback story of a lifetime”: it’s the low-risk re-entry bid of a band who know where their bread is buttered.
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Sep 23, 2013The band is just about out of transgressive fury, but they manage to muster enough rigor and discipline to keep Mechanical Bull kicking.
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Sep 23, 2013The most exciting thing that can be said for the remaining tracks is that they're less maudlin than last time around.
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Sep 20, 2013The group embraces its status as a classic-rock band, and make no mistake, this is a classic-rock album--one that evokes the sort of denim-clad '70s-rock vibe that Guns N' Roses and Foo Fighters tapped into.
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Sep 20, 2013At least there’s a couple of good ones here to stick onto the singles collection that’s inevitably just around the corner.
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Sep 20, 2013Mechanical Bull is the sound of real life. It’s the sound of Kings of Leon realizing that sometimes where you were is better than where you ended up.
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MojoSep 19, 2013If the album's (mostly) feral guitars and off-mike whoops conjure a band keen to re-harness the pluck of 2003's Youth & young Manhood, in places, the enormodome-courting trappings of recent years linger on. [Oct 2013, p.94]
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Sep 18, 2013This is as forceful, salacious and dangerous as they’re likely to get.
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UncutSep 18, 2013Kings of Leon zeroed in on their gifts for visceral rock grooves and soaring hooks--lifting standout tracks on their sixth album to a Springsteen-like level of gritty grandeur. [Oct 2013, p.70]
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Sep 18, 2013Uninspiring, unexciting, largely forgettable--this is nothing more than Kings of Leon by numbers.
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Sep 18, 2013It feels mechanical, a band on auto-pilot, going through the motions of songwriting and recording but with their hearts elsewhere.
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Sep 18, 2013A strong, engaging return to form, Mechanical Bull is made to ride. Strap in and enjoy.
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Sep 18, 2013By design, Mechanical Bull was made for fun, and in that spirit, they succeeded.
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Sep 18, 2013Mechanical Bull finds the Tennessee rockers recapturing the white-lightning-in-a-bottle spark that made their early stuff so fun.
Awards & Rankings
User score distribution:
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Positive: 80 out of 101
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Mixed: 15 out of 101
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Negative: 6 out of 101
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Sep 26, 2013
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Sep 26, 2013
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Sep 24, 2013