A review by Bez / hooper_ian@hotmail.com

First things first, I have been a BJ fan since the late 80's and have been happy seeing the bands musical changes in direction - until now.

Following the bands pop metal era with Slippery and New Jersey they progressed to writing the lyrically and musically arousing Keep the Faith, I Beleive and Dry County. This was followed by their darkest collection of music on the These Days album with songs like Hey God, My Guitar Lies Bleeding and Something to Believe in.

I have come to accept that songs like Always, This Ain't a Love Song, It's Hard Letting You go, Thank You for Loving Me and (the awful) Save the World etc will be part and parcel of a Bon jovi album. This is where I think the problem with BJ centres around - a band which has been around for nearly 20 years should be continuing to improve lyrically and musically and leave the over produced, love power ballads to a band that has no writing ability because it is songs that have a new fresh sound/message that make a band unique. Unfortunatley BJ seem to have taken the easy way out on this album writing a load of unimaginative ballads with poor lyrics and have quite desrvedly been dropped from the national radio station here in the UK, where in the past they have received massive support and publicity.

Unfortunately, with the exception of Captain Crash, Say it Isn't So and the fantastic musical finish to Next 100 years, 'Crush' fails to open any new doors and is probably their weakest album to date with poor cliched lyrics and reproduced songs from their 80's hits.

I have been inspired to write these comments having heard the new U2 album, which, coming from a band of similar age to BJ has completely blown me away and is undoubtebly one of their best albums to date.

However, to finish on a positive note, BJ are the best live band I have seen and I will certainly be looking forward to getting to one of their concerts over here in the UK during the summer.

I will keep the faith and hope for a vast improvement on the next album.

Rating: 4/10

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