So Dave Grohl Is Officially A Godlike Genius But By Heading Back To The Garage Has He Finally Topped Nevermind?

With a statuette from the NME to prove it, there can be no argument that Dave Grohl is a living legend. With his own band Foo Fighters he's equaled the stature that he had as Nirvana's drummer, but can their new album Wasting Light finally hit the benchmark by which all his work will forever be judged?

Is it harsh to still say that Dave Grohl is remembered mainly for Nirvana? With Foo Fighters now a global, festival headlining proposition and Them Crooked Vultures a massive success, not forgetting spells in Queens Of The Stone Age, Tenacious D and a cameo performance in the forthcoming Muppets movie the man is now ubiquitous, I bet even your mum has heard of him.


The truth does remain, however, that no album with his name in the credits (and there are a LOT) can topple the mighty Nevermind from its perch. Despite the number ones and Wembley performances Foo Fighters records are hit and miss affairs with only The Colour And The Shape holding its own from start to finish.


No one knows this better than Grohl himself dismissing the Foo's fourth album One By One as only having "three good songs."

The band hope to change all this with their newest; Wasting Light. Heading back to the garage to rehearse and pulling in Nevermind producer Butch Vig the Foo's have made a rock record in the classic sense. The riffs here are heavier, the vocal's louder but crucially, still with that classic pop sensibility that Grohl, and Kurt Cobain before him, always had.


Opening with the scratched chords of Bridge Burning, the track erupts into a funk rock riff that'll be in your head for days. Grohl yells 'these are my famous last words' as if this song, and the whole record, is the defining moment for the band, make or break.


Lead single rope comes next with the influence of Josh Homme and John Paul Jones in Them Crooked Vultures very apparent. Anyone familiar with their eponymous album, and particularly highlight Elephants, will love this track.

From here the album flows through songs sounding like all the best past Foo moments. These Days echoes Times Like These, A Matter Of Time is the heaviest thing the band have ever recorded and Arlandria steals the whole album with its epic chorus.

Unarguably this is the most consistent Foo Fighters album since The Colour And The Shape and there's even a slow curveball in the vein of that album's Everlong. I Should Have Known, a paean to Kurt Cobain (well possibly, Grohl won't confirm the song's subject) and featuring Krist Novoselic on bass and accordion (Nirvana'a bassist for the uninitiated) the lyrics are heartbreaking as Grohl reveals more about his personal life in a song than ever before.


Wasting Light then is the perfect return for the band, a properly classic album, and set to take them higher than ever before. If Wembley was big, you haven't seen anything yet.