Army of Zombies

This is one of my absolute favorite albums of the past few years. Lars Frederiksen is perhaps best known as the guitarist and co-vocalist/co-songwriter of Rancid. In 2001 he released his self-titled solo debut with his band The Bastards. Because of Rancid's loyal following, I expected reviewers on Amazon.com to be especially critical. Although the album is not very different from what Rancid has released in the past, the absence of Lars' other half, Tim Armstrong could possibly alienate some fans.

However, reviews on Amazon.com have been largely favorable. Because of this, I more closely examined the negative reviews. One review that struck me as particularly stupid was this one:

I don't know much about Lars Frederiksen, but he obviously doesn't think much of his band. He knows them a lot better than I do so he may be right, but I'm prepared to give them a chance. This is more of a compilation of other artists than a Lars Frediriksen album. Lars takes his vocal stylings from one popular punk rock band, while his drummer copies another, his guitarists steal from another, etc. I don't know which bands are borrowed from because they all sound the same to me. The man on the cover of this album has a mohawk hair cut which shows he is a big fan of the A-Team and Mr. T. I bought this album expecting to hear something Mr. T would be proud of and maybe some songs about Mr. T, but instead Lars chooses to whine selfishly about his own life. He breaks from this however to sing "Army of Zombies", a song about the SNES game "Zombies Ate My Neighbours". Overall this a decent Rancid album.

I am a firm believer that everyone is entitled to their opinion, but Jesus Christ. This guy couldn't possibly be more thoughtless. Am I to believe that this peckerwood actually thought about Mr. T when he saw a man (that's Lars, you idiot) with a mowhawk on the cover a punk album? What's even more shocking is that five people actually found this review helpful.

That said, there were a few very thoughtful reviews. One guy even had the depth the draw parallels between this album and some of Springsteen's work in the 70s.