In recent years, Dave Grohl has proved himself to be quite the renaissance man of rock: steering the Foo Fighters to greater heights; making videos as well as starring in them; acting as bespoke drummer to Queens Of The Stone Age. One of his most engaging qualities, though, has been his inability to hide the nerd within.
On 'Probot', Grohl emerges resplendent as a heavy metal dork. A full-blooded, affectionate and occasionally very funny album, it seems as if he's finally indulging a fantasy nurtured since his teens. To whit: round up his favourite metal vocalists from the '80s, and employ them to sing on his own tunes.
Foo Fighters fans of a gentle disposition should, perhaps, be wary of 'Probot'. When Grohl employs Cronos, lead gargler of preposterous death metallers Venom, he gives him a tune ("Centuries Of Sin") that faithfully copies the breakneck thrash style prototyped by Venom. At times, a cynic might suspect Grohl is showing off, inviting us to marvel at how he can forge anything. Demented rock'n'roll for Lemmy? Ritualistic doom for Max Cavalera of Sepultura? A razor-sharp hardcore hybrid for Mike Dean from Corrosion Of Conformity? Easy, this heavy metal business.
What dominates, though, is Grohl's unabashed love for the daftest, most entertaining metal. Apart from cameos by a couple of old grunge chums (Kim Thayil from Soundgarden, Matt Sweeney from Zwan), Grohl plays everything here, but inevitably, it's his superhumanly fierce drumming that's most noticeable, especially on sludgier tracks like the outstanding 'Big Sky', with Tom G Warrior from Celtic Frost.
In spite of all the guttural invocations of vampires, laughing demons and tortured souls, "Probot" is a perversely cheerful record – so much so that metal aficionados may condemn Grohl as a bit of a lightweight. He's not, of course: having waited 20 years for a date with these harbingers of apocalypse, is it any wonder Grohl sounds so happy?
