Drenched to their spandex underpants in double- and single-entendre lyrics that push porno-parodic excess to 11 and beyond, Steel Panther’s fifth album features another dozen tumescent, hook-laden party-rock anthems.
LA’s premier glam-metal spoof merchants are clearly not messing with a winning formula, though the lyrics here seem even more relentlessly sex-focused than ever (Pussy Ain’t Free, Goin’ In The Back Door), while the polished musical backdrop shows a little more progressive ambition: the smouldering, lightly psychedelic Now The Fun Starts could almost be a straight-faced excursion into Jane’s Addiction territory.
Like previous Panther anthems, Lower The Bar is a noteperfect, musically slick affair bursting with Russ ‘Satchel’ Parrish’s florid guitar licks. The lyrics are relentlessly puerile, but often hilarious: ‘Is it a chick or is it a dude? Doesn’t really matter if she looks good nude.’
Even the leering, sexist jokes typically rebound on the band themselves, as in the Crüe-style swagger-boast I Got What You Want, with its proudly self deflating punchline: ‘Five and half inches inches of love.’
The key element missing here is live performance since Panther are essentially a stand-up comedy spectacle. But at least Lower The Bar adds several more arena-shafting classics to their swollen arsenal of eye-watering filth.
