Fifth album, in 2019, Boneshaker extends Airbourne’s trajectory without deviating one iota. Produced by Dave Cobb, it is the band’s shortest and most compact record, a fresh shot of Australian hard rock with the pedal to the floor. The principle is immutable: energy, riffs borrowed from AC/DC and choruses to bawl, served with no pretension whatsoever. At this stage of the career, you know exactly what you are going to find, and Airbourne delivers its goods with the regularity of a metronome.
Still flat out
Boneshaker charges from start to finish, with no dead time or frills. Tracks like Boneshaker, Burnout the Fuse or Backseat Boogie string together brawling anthems built for the stage. Joel O’Keeffe’s rasping voice and the bulldozer rhythm section do the job with the efficiency of a well-oiled machine. Nothing sticks out, everything goes straight to the point: it is raw, festive rock, without surprise but without fault, faithful to a recipe the band does not for a second consider changing.
Short and to the point
The record’s brevity works in its favour: ten tracks, a short half hour, and the job is done. This concision avoids the filler pitfall that sometimes threatened the band, and keeps the intensity up throughout. Airbourne gets to the essentials, and that economy of means serves well a message that never needed to stretch out. You take it, you soak it up, and you come out smiling, without having noticed the time pass.
The latest to date
Boneshaker obviously upends nothing, and does not try to. It simply confirms that Airbourne remains a reliable purveyor of no-nonsense hard rock, able to hold its course album after album. For those who love the band, it is a fresh dose of owned guilty pleasure; for others, yet another demonstration of a formula that will never change. Consistency as a profession of faith, right to the end.
Boneshaker is an effective, unsurprising album, in the image of a career wholly devoted to faithfulness. Short, fast and honest, it does not disappoint the fans even if it will convert no one. Airbourne stays here what it has always been: a band that plays a single tune, but plays it with undiminished energy and sincerity. One more record in the service of a simple, unkillable idea of rock.
