Credit where it's due; every cloud has a silver lining. Back in 2011, I finished writing a ridiculously long review of Velociraptor! which covered every track, took ages to write, longer to read and was as much a chore to get through as the record.
Since then, my reviews are thankfully shorter and hopefully a tad more concise (although your mileage will vary) and, perhaps ironically, with their now newish album, sees me doing a polar opposite review, for a far better record.
Yes, the Kasabian I knew and loved prior to Velociraptor! are back, more stereotypical than ever and boy, have I missed this.
48:13 in it's purest form is more of a spiritual successor to Empire; starting off eardrum-burstingly loud with Bumblebee (with a nice build-up from opener (Shiva)) and continues on with more easy-on-the-ears rock and roll with Stevie and the radio-friendly Doomsday or more Beatles influence on album closer S.P.S..
Other times; the album fluctuates wildly to the more synth heavy and electronic-influence which simply either works or doesn't. The superb Bow serves are a nice penultimate track to the album while in the camp of not working is Glass; a slow, drawn out and boring track featuring a bland spoken word outro from Suli Breaks.
Bland can also be applied to the lyrics, although at this point, divulging into Kasabian's back catalogue and looking for wordsmiths is misguided. Easily the point of contention is lead single Eez-eh; featuring the laughably bad hook of paranoia at Google.
But for the most part; 48:13 is a welcome return to form. Sure, it's easily Kasabian's second worst album, but the gap between this and Velociraptor! is wide enough for 48:13 to stand amongst their first three albums and for now; that's good enough.
7/10
H
@Retcon_Nation
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