Every Man For Himself

Hoobastank，一支来自美国加利福尼亚州的后Grunge乐队，成立于1995年，由主音Doug Robb 、吉他手Dan Estrin 及鼓手Chris Hesse 组成，自去年为“MTV声援南亚”慈善音乐会演出后将再次返回曼谷为MTV亚洲大奖出力。首张同名专辑没有让他们红起来，直到《The Reason》的推出，该专辑发行四个半月后就位居排行榜三甲，他的知名度从此飞速上扬。而《The Reason 》更成为史上第二首获最多人合法下载的单曲。说真的现在已经很少像这样类型的团体冲到排行榜，毕竟现在已不是摇滚乐流行的年代，普遍充斥的饶舌和R&B占据所有人的视听，那一直不停碎碎念的歌真像魔音穿脑哩！当饶舌摇滚乐如火如荼发酵时，Hoobastank 不为所动的走自己的路，这样的独特差异果然吸引众多乐迷，更轰动整个美国西岸俱乐部。98年该团自掏腰包发行首张专辑《they sure don't make basketball short like they used to》，不论是在演出后贩卖或当地零售店里都很畅销，透过网络的无国界效应，喜欢他们的乐迷甚至远及英国、以色列、苏联、或巴西，才短短几个月唱片已卖个精光！与主流名厂ISLAND签约推出首张同名专辑《Hoobastank》，由 jim wirt〈incubus/重击合唱团、fiona apple/费欧娜艾波〉制作，jay baumgardner 混音，让已厌倦千篇一律饶舌摇滚乐的人重享美好的旋律共鸣。

万众期待的最新专辑《Every Man For Himself》中的第一主打 《If I Were You…》也已高居各大电台播放率榜首。今年5月，Hoobastank一定会在2006MTV亚洲大奖的现场释放他们的摇滚能量。

Hoobastank once and forever banished any lingering doubts that they were a bunch of Bonnaroo hippies, à la Ekoostik Hookah, with their 2003 sophomore effort, The Reason, a strident collection of loud, angsty rockers that sounded as if it could have come out in the twilight days of post-grunge in 1997/1998. Not catchy or bratty enough to truly be pigeonholed as punk-pop and way too big and slick to be emo, they were a straight-up, hard-edged alt-rock band, only without any suggestion of being outsiders, either in their sound or intent. They were anthemic, and nowhere more so than on the power ballad title track, which became a smash in 2004, climbing all the way to number two on the Billboard Hot 100. Two years after that, Hoobastank delivered Every Man for Himself, their third album and their first as bona fide rock stars, and it sure sounds like the work of a band that's now established: it's slick and stylish, big and bright, designed for arenas and as bumper music on both MTV and VH1. Bassist Markku Lappalaninen may have left the fold, but his absence is not the reason for the slight changes in their sound; he would not be the one to polish the production, to add the strings, or to add a heavy dose of Franz Ferdinand-styled disco-rock, either. These are all things that the remaining three — vocalist Douglas Robb, guitarist Dan Estrin, and drummer Chris Hesse — along with returning producer Howard Benson brought to the table, and the result is a record that sounds a little more colorful and a little more appropriate than its two predecessors, which tended to be slightly monotonous and dull. The proliferation of keyboards, strings, acoustic guitars, and even horns gives this some welcome sonic variety, which helps balance the plodding sincerity of the group's grinding guitars and Robb's ham-fisted lyrics ("I am not the next of them/I am the first of me"). And since Hoobastank is about the overall sound instead of the specifics of the song or performances, it is good that there is more happening on the surface, since it makes the album coherent and easier to digest. But even if Every Man for Himself was constructed with the mainstream in mind, it likely won't win any new converts, since at their core Hoobastank remains unchanged: their songs aren't particularly dynamic or catchy, the band doggedly follows alt-rock conventions as if adherence to clichés gives the group legitimacy, and Robb's pedestrian voice alternately disappears into the mix or veers flat when he holds a note. No matter how flashy their new production is, these are things that are hard to ignore, and they prevent Every Man for Himself from being the kind of mass-audience-consolidating big statement that it was surely intended to be. [Every Man for Himself was released with two separate covers presenting the same artwork in different colors (à la Split Enz with True Colours: there is a green variation of the front-cover fingerprint and a red variation).]