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Krokus > Change of Address > Reviews
Krokus - Change of Address

Say Goodbye (to most of the fan base) - 40%

Deathdoom1992, April 14th, 2018

Ah, the much-maligned Change of Address, Krokus's very own St. Anger. Where to start with this album? Well, perhaps the best place to start is something of a defense for it. Sure, it's a sub-par album. But that's the worst of it. Sub-par, not the musical abortion it's made out to be. Krokus themselves claim the sound is due to record label pressure, but from what I hear on here, this is very much The Blitz taken further in the direction of cliched '80s hard rock. And it's not even like it's a radical deviation from their established sound: whilst albums like Metal Rendez-vous are undeniably heavier, Change of Address remains in the general vicinity of the band's hard rock roots (well, their roots during the Storace years).

I don't know why I feel so compelled to defend this. It's irrational. This album isn't even good. But contrarily, it's not awful, as it is made out to be. And I have a soft spot for Krokus. I don't know why. Possibly it's because of the struggle they had to break onto the international scene in a country with no rock or metal pedigree to speak of, but most likely it's because of the amateurish, endearing nature of their endeavours. I mean, as much as I love 'em, I don't think Krokus have written a truly original song to date.

But onto this album itself. My defense has concluded, and we must therefore examine the flaws which become painfully apparent on a single listen to this album. First, a persistent issue in hard rock albums throughout the 1980s: a drum sound which is just crap, including a snare that I assume was meant to sound futuristic/modern, and/or poppy but it just sounds, well... bad and cheesy. As I mention, this is a general problem with '80s hard rock, not just Krokus. Seriously, just listen to ZZ Top's '83 blockbuster Eliminator and you'll hear the same drum sound, I promise.

Flaw number 2, however, is very much band-specific. I touched on Krokus's struggle to be..... umm, actually creative, rather than just enjoyable, and here it shows through worse than ever. It could be that preceding albums had stronger material surrounding the duds, or it could even be that the earlier Storace albums just had a level of energy which concealed the, err, inconsistencies of the songwriting. But here it is painfully obvious that the band was just churning out shit for half of the album to pad out the runtime. I mean "Say Goodbye" and "Hard Luck Hero"... c'mon, the latter is practically written in cliches, and that goes for the music to both of those tracks too: simply generic hard rock, with no draw and nothing to grab the attention.

On the other hand, this album has some songs which almost, almost rescue it from its sub-par status. Like album opener "Now". What a song it is, pure trash in the best possible way: absolutely no purpose, but fantastically catchy, just like the best hard rock. It has all the depth of a puddle, and is about as cerebral as, I dunno, a not-cerebral thing, but that matters not one iota because it's just fun, which I think was in general something Krokus missed out on when making this album. And then, of course, there's songs like "World on Fire", all melodramatic heavy metal and even more melodramatic lyrics about, what else, love and relationships (a recurring theme), but six minutes of entertainment nonetheless.

Overall, this one definitely hurt the Swiss rockers in the long run: subsequent to the release of this album, they left Arista and ushered in more than 20 years of line-up instability, featuring failed partial reunions, some bottom-of-the-barrel albums and general struggle to recapture the audience they had in the early part of the '80s, also this has since been remedied with the reunion with lead wailer Marc Storace in 2002. But if you brush away all the negative preconceptions of this album, then sure, you'll find a flawed, generic '80s hard rock album, but you'll find an album not without merit, not the piece of trash it's made out to be.

Burning up the cash - 0%

Brainded Binky, November 9th, 2014

Krokus is one of many bands that some say were criminally underrated during their salad days in the 80's. I hate to burst the bubbles of any Krokus fan, but there are reasons as to why they were overlooked. This album, "Change of Address" is one of those reasons. Now, Krokus may have had a few songs that were downright annoying, mainly 'cos of Marc Storace's high-pitched, nasally vocals and catchy choruses, but they made up for that by crafting ripping songs like "Headhunter" and "Out of Control", thus leading me to say that they could be worse. Well, guess what, this album is exactly the worse that I'm talking about.

Believe me, who doesn't hate when a band ditches the factors that made them awesome and replaces them with factors that make them not so awesome? Remember when I said that Krokus had songs that were entertaining to listen to cos of how fast and grinding they were? Well, we don't get any of that here. We're stuck with asinine numbers such as "Hot-Shot City", which has a chorus that sticks in your head so much, you'd want to James Hetfield repeatedly proclaiming that he is a piece of furniture while Lou Reed banters about randomness. Do I even need to remind you the purpose of such choruses besides driving us into madness? "Hard Luck Hero" is another abomination that comes spewing out of the grooves of this album. It sounds like the Romantics lowered their guitars a little and played their crowd favorite songs. It also has lyrics that sound like they've been ripped straight from the lyric sheets from bands that were in the same studio as Krokus! How many times have you heard lyrics like "back against the wall" or "gotta run"? Quite a few times, right? Perhaps too many times.

As with thousands of other bands that tried to make it bigger, they had to put synthesizers in it. Case in point, "Long Way from Home". Oh, sure, there's a little lick that features tapping at the beginning of the song, but it doesn't make it any better, for it's just another song where the synthesizers take up much of the music, and the guitar power is weakened. This song would not sound out of place in an 80's flick where a girl with a cheesy 80's-style hairdo has to fight goblins or monsters (which are actually puppets), and eventually learns to believe in herself. It's that bad. You could also expect a ballad to come out of an album that sounds like this, and yes, it sure does have a couple. If you would've guessed that "Say Goodbye" is yet another wimpy ode to true love, you are absolutely correct. It's got that slow tempo, along with extremely light guitars and, you guessed it, a sing-along chorus. They've even inserted a tambourine in there for some reason! "Let this Love Begin" is another song which utilizes wimpy love lyrics. It also begins with a highly generic and uninspiring acoustic guitar lick that can probably be found in a song from a much better band.

Another thing to complain about is the production quality. It's just so overdone and over-polished. The drums don't even sound like real drums, but drum machines, things that were especially common in the 80's. I have mentioned before that the synthesizers almost completely delete any guitar sound, which is actually pretty light, all things considered. Metal is characterized by an extremely heavy sound, but Krokus seems to fail to meet that criteria with "Change of Address". Of course, you could say that being "metal" isn't really the goal of Krokus so much as it is to be laughing their way to the bank with a crap-ton of cash from charting. Unsurprisingly, that never happened at all, cos I certainly don't remember anyone talking about the magnificence of "Hot Shot City". Oh yes, you will have to deal with Marc Storace's annoying nasally vocals, making the experience of listening to this album all the more unbearable. The fact that he sings softer in some tracks like the ballads is no excuse not to hate this abomination.

Krokus was a band that wasn't the best to begin with, namely due to its catchy choruses and irritating vocalist, but the albums that came before "Change of Address" at least had some songs that were tolerable, and even memorable. "Change of Address" has absolutely no saving grace whatsoever. It's generic, it's silly, and it makes Judas Priest's "Turbo" album sound like "Sad Wings of Destiny". If you didn't already hate Krokus, one listen to this album would most certainly make you hate them now.

Where did they buy these clothes? - 38%

Felix 1666, May 1st, 2014

Admittedly, I am confronted with a serious problem. Does anybody have a good idea how to write a review about an album you hate that was released by a band you love? No? I´m not either. Well, let´s face it. Rose Tattoo were right: nice boys don't play Rock´n Roll. Nevertheless, Marc Storace officially stated that Krokus exactly wanted to play this role. How can it be possible, that one can be so stupid? However, their hair-dresser was financially secure for life. Even worse, they wore the most ridiculous clothes ever. But the worst is yet to come. Let´s talk about the music.

The nice boys from Switzerland consistently performed light and pleasing songs that were additionally softened by the harmless and greasy production of glam metal specialist Tom Werman. Due to the often used synthesizer, everything sounded cheesy and slimy. The foreseeable melody lines were mediocre at best while the rhythm section performed sleepily. One might say that some of the melodies were nevertheless well done, but the songs completely lacked of authenticity. Just compare this output with "Headhunter", their harshest full-length. You will not recognize the band. All song arrangements were as original as the choice of the cover song, the terrible "School´s Out" with its nerve-shattering children´s choir. Every rock fan had already heard this more or less stupid song much too often and the version of the nice boys did not deliver any new aspects. But this piece was not the only one we had heard before. The opening riff of "Say Goodbye" was already used by the nice boys themselves (listen to "Tokyo Nights", published on "Metal Rendez-vous") and it is unbelieveable that seemingly nobody realized this type of recycling. Very significantly, this unvoluntary reminder of better times was among the few good riffs. Those who seek very thoroughly will furthermore find acceptable riffs in "Hot Shot City", "Hard Luck Hero" and the swinging opener "Now". It can therefore be said that these tunes relieve the pain, but it would be an exaggeration to mention them as exceptional. Maybe because of this compositional incompetence Krokus replaced two of the band members not much later and Chris von Rohr fortunately returned.

The boring lyrics did not offer something surprising. They dealt with such extraordinary themes as love, party time and heartache and were obviously only used to have a reason for the contribution of Marc Storace to this album - and there is absolutely nothing further to say.

To summarize, the best part of this album was that the ludicrous concept of the "nice boys" died a sudden death after the commercial failure of this output. Well, I have to admit that they climbed to number 45 in the American Billboard Charts. Nonetheless, the album did not meet the expectations and the following evolution proved that Krokus had not been invented to play trendy pop songs with only a few metallic ingredients. They should have released "Change of Address" under a different name.

A Sad Example of Record Company Interference - 65%

DeathRiderDoom, January 18th, 2010

#4 In my Krokus Review Series

I could potentially go into massive detail with this review, but who’s going to read the damn thing anyway? So I’ll try keep it brief(ish). Krokus are a commercially successful band that capitalized on the (largely local) success of the ’81 album ‘Hardware’ and gained a string of record contracts with large company Arista, which lead to fairly big-budget efforts, and decent promotion, and the band having considerable record sales with especially ‘Headhunter’ but also ‘The Blitz’ and ‘One Vice at a Time’. Though always a fairly hard rock, commercial orientated band, playing a style often very similar to Australian titans ACDC (especially in ‘One Vice…’, and at their hardest Saxon, Krokus has far more talent, and have released a much greater array of materials then many of the other bandwagon pop-star wannabe bands that played a similar style.not only that, but Krokus in an early incarnation was formed as early as ’74, not only explaining their talent by the time the ‘80s rolled around, but also their working class hard rock style, and why they’re far more respectable than the bandwagoniers of the mid-late 80’s like Cinderella etc.

The aforementioned label deal with Arista did have it’s downsides though, and this came here in the form of label company pressure. While the band had more freedom earlier own, from what I understand, and came out with the top-selling ‘Headhunter’ their opus effort, with far more of a heavy metal style (including guest appearance by Rob Halford), but afterward came under increasing pressure from Arista, to shape their sound according to the commercial clap-trap that was selling in the United States; which included watered down rock/glam metal with obnoxious production by bands like Autograph, Giuffria, Fate, Firehouse, Poison, Tuff, Tyketto etc. Though some of these bands were great, it was not really where Krokus’ allegiances lied; they were a veteran band that had defined their sound with ‘One Vice’ and ‘Headhunter’ but since that had to increasingly commercialize their sound at the behest of record company exec’s. Not only here, but also in ‘The Blitz’ this had a big effect on the sound. For these reasons, this album was largely watered down, and panned by longtime fans of this band. It has been referred to as their “worst album to date”.

Exhaustive history aside, this album is a bit worse than their other ‘80s material, and features some pretty throwaway material, such as the lame ‘Hard Luck Hero’ with it’s candy-ass riffage, lame lyrics and pathetic subject matter. This song epitomizes what’s wrong with the album, and points clearly to record “execu-bot” interference (to quote Futurama. Krokus themselves state that this commercially acceptable masterpiece took them the longest production time out of any of their works to this date, and puts the onus on Tom Werman, producer, as well as the company as a whole. You can hear when listening to the song, the passionless, defeated tone in Marc Storace’s voice, and the whimpering, cowardly sound of Fernando von Arb and Marc Kohler’s guitars, who have crafted some excellent stuff in the past, especially with their strong rhythm section, who is as tight as Saxon’s at times. Anyway, this is the worst song, and it’s not all bad, but basically it’s the record companies fault.

The simplistically opener ‘Now’ is pretty decent, and while being commercially infused, it has some balls to it, at least. The production job on this album is really commercial, spacey and complex, as was the style, but it does make for some cool guitar tones in the solos, though often the riffs (which in the chorus here are actually quite cool) are softened up, and turned down. Incredibly catchy, this one is a wee bit closer to the classic Krokus sound, with an overall sound that is more inline with their direction, but a production/mixing job that tries to “glam it up” a bit, making it sweeter, and more inline with current trends. Storace proves he still has a great voice, and the band as a whole shows they still have a knack for crafting catchy as hell hooks. His pitch changes are as smooth as a baby’s behind, and he executes with balls in the gutsy chorus. The problem is the interference in production; drums sound candy-ass, like a drum machine, and are incredibly quiet, even if the pyrotechnic explosions are cool.

Though ‘Now’ is less-forced but with totally obnoxious production, others are not so lucky. ‘Hot Shot City’, though featuring some of the classic Krokus style ACDCish guitar, has pretty lame lyrics, reminding me of a lame version of their party anthem from ‘Headhunter’ ‘Stayed Awake all Night’. Basically this is the record company trying to copy ‘Dancing in the Street’ by Van Halen, but in the style of Giuffria. Some cool guitars, but you can’t hear them over the intrusive keyboards and thinned out, turned-down production. On of the shittier efforts along with ‘Hard Luck Hero’. I don’t mind this style of music when it’s done well by band who from the start were commercial endeavours (which you don’t take as seriously), but when it’s done by a band that can a) rock hard, and b) is obviously not their sound and more obviously record company interference, it’s just no good.

‘Let the Love Begin’ sounds like KISS’ early/late ‘80s material, and is a ballad that features a very locked in, tight rhythm section and guitars, that while technical, would be nice sounding if the production job didn’t have their greasy mits all over them. Storace is on form, and vocal phrasing in the chorus is ok, but the chorus is a little saccharin, with female backup vocals and lame lyrics. Guitars here again drowned out by keys, and the solo feels like it doesn’t fit with the music; like the guitars were forced to write something quick and commercial, rather than the awesome, passionate solos you get from Iron Maiden that are like climaxes organically developed with the song as a whole, and pushing forward the themes and meaning. Some of the other songs are catchy and okay, but often sound forced and watered down.

In summation this album is a victim of record “execu-bots”. Many of the songs are just plain not where Krokus would want to go. Sure, after ‘Headhunter’ they had been getting cleaner and more commercial, but this just crosses the line. The subject matters often seem forced, like “right a song about this” and “no, no, we can’t write about that” and the production, though fine for bands like Giuffria or Kick Axe, here is just intrusive. This is the biggest example of producer interference I can think of, and it’s no wonder it disappointed many long time fans, especially when you consider many were mature rockers by this time. It didn’t sell well like the company hoped, and instead marred the bands reputation, which they would take some time (arguably to the turn of the millennium) to repair. Largely avoidable, considering how large their catalogue is, and how much better their earlier works were. I wouldn’t hold it against the band though; you’re locked into a contract, and we all know how badly these producers behaved, and how it is nearly impossible to weasel out of a record-contract without being sued for millions, or unable to record under that name. A sad chapter in Krokus’ history.

-DeathRiderDoom