Track Listing 1. Kickapoo 2. Classico 3. Baby 4. Destiny 5. History 6. Government Totally Sucks, The 7. Master Exploder 8. Divide, The 9. Papagenu (He's My Sassafrass) 10. Dude (I Totally Miss You) 11. Break In-City (Storm the Gate!) 12. Car Chase City 13. Beelzeboss (The Final Showdown) 14. Pod 15. Metal, The
| Details | | Producer: | John King | | Distributor: | Sony Music Distribution ( | | Recording Type: | Studio | | Recording Mode: | Stereo | | SPAR Code: | n/a |
Album Notes Original Soundtrack/Tenacious D: Kyle Gass, Jack Black. Personnel: Kyle Gass, Jack Black (vocals, acoustic guitar); Dave Grohl (vocals, drums); Ronnie James Dio (vocals); Liam Lynch (guitar); John Konesky (electric guitar); John Spiker (Clavinet, background vocals); John King (drum programming). Additional personnel: Meat Loaf (vocals); John Spiker (bass guitar); John Konesky, Dave Grohl, John King , Liam Lynch, Ronnie James Dio. Audio Mixer: Ken Andrews. Recording information: 606 Studio; Capitol Studios, Hollywood, CA; Sony Scoring Stage; The Dell. Photographer: Michael Elins. Seven years after their short-lived HBO TV series debuted, the hard-rock comedy duo of Jack Black and Kyle Gass (a.k.a. Tenacious D) finally starred in their own feature-length film, 2006's THE PICK OF DESTINY. This brazenly wacky album serves as both the movie's soundtrack and the follow-up to the band's cheeky '01 self-titled debut. As on the earlier outing, Dave Grohl (Foo Fighters/Nirvana) gets behind the drum kit for a number of songs, and rock icons Meatloaf and Ronnie James Dio also make guest appearances. The D's ridiculous, heavy-metal-loving sense of humor is on full display during the driving title track, while "Master Exploder" focuses on Black's considerable singing prowess. For fans of Jables and Kage, this is a welcome blessing from the gods of rock. It's easy but not accurate to call Tenacious D a one-joke band, since they do love one joke best of all: that they are the greatest band in the world. It's a credit to Jack Black and Kyle Gass' strengths as writers and performers that at their best they can convince you it's true. Like the best comedians, the key is both in the writing and the delivery: jokes can be good on paper, but they need to be delivered with flair, and few have the flair of Jack Black, who has made megalomania inspiring, even adorable. That quality combined with serious vocal chops -- anybody who saw him on Mr. Show's "The Joke: The Musical" back in 1997 knew that he could sing -- gave Tenacious D both star power and musical substance, while Gass grounds it by giving Jack a comic foil, plus lead guitar and harmony. When it all gels, as it did on their short-lived HBO series and their 2001 debut, it's glorious, but even that 2001 LP indicated a problem with the D: when the scale gets larger, they get smaller, or at least their reason for being begins to unravel. Since the reason their joke works is that JB and KG are underdogs -- they're the best band in the world, it's just that the rest of the world hasn't figured it out yet -- when they're no longer underdogs, they're not quite as funny, or endearing. They're at their best when it's the two of them on-stage, playing acoustic guitars and riffing off each other. They're good enough that they can survive a bigger budget, as the debut illustrates -- it always helps to have Dave Grohl on your side, of course -- but a really big budget is still a problem, as the soundtrack to their big-screen extravaganza, The Pick of Destiny, proves. Jack and Kyle have been promising a cinematic venture chronicling their rise to power since they -- alright, since Jack turned into a star after stealing the show in the 2000 film High Fidelity, and 2006's The Pick of Destiny, made in collaboration with director/musician/prankster Liam Lynch, finally follows through on that promise. Leave aside the merits of the movie and compare the The Pick of Destiny soundtrack to the debut, and it's easy to see that this album is a very different beast than Tenacious D. That first album captured the essence of the original D -- the D that was nothing but Kage and Jables and their guitars -- but pumped up with heaps of electric guitars and thunderous drums from Grohl. It cribbed from a lot, but not all, of their standards, so it felt like a culmination of sorts: it finally felt like the D blossomed into a genuine rock band. In turn, The Pick of Destiny has greater ambitions -- appropriately ...
Editorial Reviews [The album] makes plenty of room for both foul-mouthed gag lyrics and full-throated homages to the swaggering majesty of Led Zeppelin and Dio. -- Grade: B+ Entertainment Weekly
[D]rums are provided by none other than Dave Grohl and he adds a solid backbone to all the rockier material here. Kerrang
THE PICK OF DESTINY makes its mark with pennywhistle-enhanced songs about Bigfoot, post-breakup ballads and guest shots from Dave Grohl. Alternative Press
| See an error? Submit a change request |