Audio Adrenaline
Hit Parade: The Greatest Hits
Reviewed by Jamie Lee Rake
Anybody reading out there remember the first Audio Adrenaline indie cassingle, where the guys came off as a particularly crazed metal-rap band with a blunt-edged evangie sense of humor and some chunky-butt riffage to back up their heavy-handedly funny schtick? Well, if you're a newbie to AA at this point, you ain't hearing that side of them now. That unfortunate aspect aside, Hit Parade : The Greatest Hits acquits Audio A as an adeptly and diversely rockin band: safe enough to be a perennial youth pastor fav for years, yet possessed of enough rockin ability to not make you wince unduly. Surprisingly, this retrospective leads off with some of their more raucous ditties. New tunes "Will Not Fade" and "One Like You" sport what may be an overly derivative U2 influence, but perhaps it bodes good and harder rocking things from AA. "Mighty Good Leader" and "Some Kind Of Zombie" segue naturally enough into the rockabilly boogie of "DC-10" (brandishing a wit of which Larry Norman would be proud) and calmer mainstream (in Christian circles) radio fare such as "Get Down" and their nigh eternal uber-anthem, "Big House." Think about it hard enough, and "Chevette" could even be interpreted as the group's response to the sonic dynamics of grunge. Even with 17 selections, not every facet of the band gets its due. Apart from nothing from their first long-player, also missing is anything from their live album, though Audio Adrenaline's penchant for the occasional biblical blunder is present (on "We're A Band" mention is made of Christ "coming back to life real soon," what, He's not alive in Heaven?!). And no "Don't Censor Me?" For shame! Compiling a best-of on an act with so much radio and sales success must have been a mite daunting, but this does as good a job as might be expected for a band that rocks credibly when it wants and still has the cuddliness to make parents and those youth pastors comfy. Let the parade roll on.