“When The Pick of Destiny was released it was a bomb,” Jack Black (nay, JB) sings. “And all the critics said that the D was done.” This is true enough — after a surprisingly successful debut album in 2001, Tenacious D (Black and cohort Kyle Glass, a.k.a. KG) followed it up a few years later with a feature-length movie and concept album/soundtrack to the film, and neither film nor album were met with the same level of enthusiasm as the breakthrough. Black, of course, was hardly struggling for work — he went on to pursue a string of hit (and not-so-hit) movies, leaving The D on the back-burner for a while.
As someone who was a teenager when the first record came out and couldn’t go anywhere without hearing “Tribute” being played – and sung-along-to quite loudly by hordes of blossoming frat bros – I have a kind of affinity for Tenacious D in the sense that I don’t dislike them. In fact, I rather like quite a few of their tracks, and remember being one of the many seemingly underwhelmed by their second album. Whether it was because it owed itself to the film is debatable, but aside from a strong lead single, it just wasn’t as memorable – or as fun – as the debut.
New track “Rize of the Fenix,” which shares its title with their upcoming third studio album, is nothing new at all for the group (right down to the phallic references, lyrically and in the artwork). It’s more lovingly silly odes to classic rock and heavy metal, the sort of music that inspired the duo to start writing songs in the first place. But one of the things I do enjoy about Tenacious D is that they’re not always quite as disposable and gimmicky as they let on – it’s almost like a defense mechanism, that they never quite take themselves seriously enough that critical backlash could seem to affect them in any way, but the truth is that the two dudes have some songwriting chops, and Black has a decent voice when he’s not trying too hard to be purposely bad. “Fenix” opens with an acoustic riff and suddenly blasts into a heavy assault of rock n’ roll. This song isn’t going to convert new fans, but if you liked Tenacious D back then, you’ll probably still like them now, and this song is essentially what you’d hope for it to be.
