It seems like their last album Good Bad Not Evil just came out. But of course that's not true. I just bought it recently, that's all. But it does seem like the tour to promote it never ended, and that may be true. Whatever the reason, 200MillionThousand seems almost unnecessary. Not that it is. It's actually better than their last album in places, and definitely doesn't sound like a retread. But if you had asked me who I wanted a new album from in 2009, The Black Lips wouldn't be on my list.
I probably wouldn't even be mentioning all of this, but this album is too fucking long by at least 10 minutes. Their last two albums were under 40 minutes, so why the hell is this one 50? Sure, 3 of it is silence for the hidden track (and why the fuck is any band including hidden tracks in 2009? Do they pull this crap on every album?), but that just adds to the frustration. It's also not hard to find the tracks that are worth cutting. "I'll Be With You" just sounds unnecessary when the band already has "Dirty Hands", and about half the songs on the 2nd half are pretty forgettable. At least I've forgotten them while writing this review.
All that aside, the album has its strong moments, and shows a lot of promise. Opener "Take My Heart" is a nice dirty rocker, and "Starting Over" is a pretty little song. "Big Black Baby Jesus of Today" is one of their harder rocking songs. Really, the album's best moment is it's official final track "I Saw God". The song opens with inaudible narration that actually gets bleeped out towards the end. This jarring gimmick might frustrate and irritate a lot of listeners, but I think it works. Otherwise, you wouldn't notice that he's cussing, and it adds a certain element of sonic terrorism that makes the song more dangerous. When the final build kicks in, you're definitely paying attention, and that makes it all the more powerful.
But it's the actual final track that highlights my problem with this album. Where "I Saw God" was a thoughtful restrained song, "Meltdown" sounds like something that was crapped out in one jam session with little to no thought put into the lyrics...which is fine. But I would expect a song like that to rock a little harder. In fact, I wish just about every song on here rocked a little bit harder. The Black Lips definitely have no shortage of catchy hooks. What they seem to lack is the ability to translate those hooks into energy in the studio. Live, they definitely know how to make their songs roar. Which is maybe where these songs should have stayed.
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