Review: Hank Williams Jr., "It's About Time"

The title of Hank Williams Jr.’s latest album seems most appropriate. At least, it sums up what I’m thinking as I listen to what might be his best complete album in years: It’s About Time that Hank remembered he’s a musician and not a politician.

That’s not to say that there’s no political content on his Nash Icon label debut. His cover of Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “God and Guns,” for example, certainly qualifies. But the commentary comes from a far different place here than the soapbox pandering that he’s so often done in recent years. It’s closer to the sentiment on “A Country Boy Can Survive” than on, say, “Keep the Change” from his last record. The political content here is more a statement of personal belief than a forced attack on other ideologies, and you can respect that.

Review: Black Label Society, "The Song Remains Not the Same"

The days of getting a new Black Label Society record every year seem to be over, and that’s probably not a bad thing considering the way Zakk Wylde seemed to have burned out of good riffs on the band’s 2007 record Shot to Hell. So instead of a follow-up to last year’s outstanding Order of the Black, fans get the teaser record The Song Remains Not the Same.

We’ll put aside the bad title for the time being and dive right in. There’s no new material here. Instead, it’s a collection of four mostly-acoustic versions of songs from Order of the Black, four covers that all appeared as bonus tracks on various different versions of that album, an alternate version of “Darkest Days” featuring country singer John Rich, and an instrumental version of the Christmas carol “The First Noel,” which Wylde recorded for a guitar Christmas album some years ago.