Album Review: Steel Panther – All You Can Eat

Steel Panther return with their third studio album All You Can Eat; another raucous, rude and quite frankly brilliantly constructed album. It never fails to amaze me that Steel Panther are able to make a perfectly good living out of shitty metal nearly 30 years after it had its heyday.

At this point if you can’t deal with Steel Panther’s explicit lyrics and behaviour then I think it’s time you just pretend that they don’t exist. With song titles such as ‘Bukkake Tears’ containing lyrics such as ‘there was so much spunk on your face, neither the boys or I could see the tears’ it is clear they are here to take the piss. Steel Panther have embraced their comedy appearance completely now so it’s difficult to see how their vulgar lyrics can be seen as deliberate, more being deliberately rude and sarcastic.

On a basic level, Steel Panther are an excellent band. Lyrics aside, they weave together infectious songs that just sound unbelievably fresh and tight. Everything from how well they play their instruments to how well produced the album is makes it great fun to listen to. I definitely felt guilty enjoying just how much fun this album is despite being the rudest, shittiest album I’ve listened to since their last album ‘Balls Out’.

Stand out tracks include the formulaic but tight ‘Party Like Tomorrow Is The End Of The World’ which coincidentally is actually quite lyrically clean, making it a nicer way to ease into the rest of the album. ‘Bukakke Tears’ leaves nothing to the imagination while sounding like a fucked up epic ballad and ‘The Burden of Being Wonderful’ is an excellent parody of classic 80’s glam rock stardom while ‘If I Was King’ somewhat taps into common themes and is more of a platform for the crazy themes that Steel Panther try to promote. Wrapping up the album is the catchy ‘She’s On The Rag’ which invokes an image of the period blood stain from ‘Superbad’ but I’m sure someone somewhere could analysis the shit out of it as a metaphor for how young women force themselves to please men in the modern day and age. Maybe Steel Panther have already beaten you to it? I dunno! You need to leave your serious face at the door, sit down and enjoy the buffet that is ‘All You Can Eat’ and enjoy the guilty pleasure that is Steel Panther.