Welcome to the Jungle: Eagles of Death Metal, 'Heart On'

EAGLES OF DEATH METAL hail from Palm Desert, Calif., so they didn't have to go far to lay down their big L.A. album. Recorded in Burbank, "Heart On" is a pop-metal paean to the city's glammy underbelly, its innumerable palm trees and "sunset honeys." The duo raise a glass to cheap thrills on "Cheap Thrills" and learn to dance on "(I Used to Couldn't Dance) Tight Pants."

"I came to L.A. to make rock 'n' roll," they sing on the strutting "Wannabe in L.A." "Along the way I had to sell my soul." The city may lure artists westward with promises of artistic rejuvenation and commercial opportunity only to render them bland, but these actually sound best when they sound slickest — when they have nothing more substantial to say than, "Hey there, hot stuff."

Copping to neither the dry folk rock nor the none-more-black riffage implied by their name, Eagles of Death Metal specialize in snarling, slobbering pop-metal that sounds like a more muscular Sweet and makes Buckcherry pretty much redundant. High school friends Jesse "Boots Electric" Hughes and Josh "Baby Duck" Homme (you know him from Queens of the Stone Age) first formed the band to record some mysterious b-sides in 1998, but waited six years to release a debut, "Peace, Love & Death Metal." At the time, they were considered a joke band for their exaggerated swagger and their awareness that rock 'n' roll is ultimately pretty silly. Four years and thousands of devil horns later, Hughes and Homme have beefed up the boogie, sharpened their songwriting, and outlived the joke.

"I take the city in the dead of night," Hughes sings on the speed-freak "Dead of Night," "I'm burnin' gas until I feel alright." Their L.A. is best experienced at 120 mph, which is about the speed they play most of their songs. By contrast, "Now I'm a Fool" sounds more ruminative, self-doubting, narcotized: "Where nothin' is real, even what you feel is an illusion." That passes as a deep thought on "Heart On," but it's no more ridiculous than, say, "Every Rose Has Its Thorn."

The L.A. angle makes the album sound more coherent than 2006's "Death by Sexy," and for all of its lewd guitar and cock-of-the-walk pomp — and despite that groaner of an album title — "Heart On" endears partly because their exaggerated machismo avoids the misogyny often intrinsic to hard rock. With their tight pants and superior dance moves, the Eagles expose themselves so you can shake your ass without feeling icky about it.

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Written by Express contributor Stephen M. Deusner

Photo by Kii Arens