Chickenfoot
III

Surprising, this is the adjective that most characterizes the new work of the band composed of Sammy Hagar, Joe Satriani, Chad Smith, and Michael Anthony. Chickenfoot III is indeed a perfectly accomplished album, which sounds amazing from start to finish and presents no missteps.
All the songs on this Chickenfoot III have a great groove, they make you tap your foot from beginning to end, and as soon as the CD is over, you feel the urge to start it over. And when things are like that, there's really not much else to add: it's only rock & roll but I like it!

From a purely musical perspective, we are facing pure USA-style rock: round and heavy sounds, beautiful harmonizations, songs with no excessive superstructures built with decisive riffs and choruses that always work. The undisputed protagonist is Sammy Hagar's voice which, just like good whiskey (though he prefers tequila), gets better year after year. Satriani proves to be perfectly comfortable in the role of guitar hero in the service of the band, weaving a series of functional and never banal rhythms that alternate with a series of rock school solos (the sound of his guitars is also very beautiful, always very full and with liquid nuances that enhance the harmonies and Hagar's screams). The rhythm section, for its part, doesn't miss a beat and so everything inevitably falls into place.

With this album, the Chickenfoot project, born as a mere amusement of four big names in world music, proves to have reached full artistic maturity: I believe we can now speak of a real band and no longer just a supergroup destined to revive moldy careers.
Finally, it's very interesting to note how Chickenfoot have demonstrated a very high attention to 2.0 communication from the very start, gifting fans with video and audio podcasts of all kinds, maintaining a constant presence on social networks, offering on their website a series of daily snapshots from the studio and the tour, meticulously taking care of even the smallest details of the digital booklet, or with ideas like the entirely 3D package complete with glasses of the last CD. All done with a feeling and a desire to have fun that is really hard to find in artists of this age and level (it inevitably brings to mind people like Metallica, now grayed businessmen devoid of ideas). The impression is that these four lads have a blast, probably because by now they are in a position to do what they want, how they want: they have created around them a flexible and nimble structure that allows them to play freely and, apparently, they've developed a taste for it.

After all, rock is nothing more than this: four friends picking up their instruments and having fun playing, no matter where, how, or for whom. Chickenfoot are here to demonstrate this to us, if we ever needed it.