By Brian Giffin
This far into their career and having long ago established themselves as a band that simply doesn’t care what anyone thinks of them, there’s no point pretending to be shocked or appalled by anything Steel Panther might do lyrically now. After five albums of unrepentant single-entendre sleaze and debauchery, no one can seriously go into listening to On the Prowl and not know what to expect. Track titles like Is My Dick Enough and Magical Vagina aren’t exactly subtle, and that’s something Steel Panther has never been about.
Yet here we are, because after pushing the envelope off the table with Heavy Metal Rules, On the Prowl dials things back just a little so they exist well within expectations but with less of the outlandish offensiveness that album pursued. The jokes are still crude and delivered with the same straight-faced, earnest energy as before, only with a little less of the sheer crassness and over-reliance on swearing that’s been seen from this band in the past.
Resplendent with Van Halen 1984-style synths and shred, the party metal of Never to Late (to Get Some Pussy) gets things going in the expected direction before Friends With Benefits veers into heavier if no less raucous territory with a huge singalong chorus and plenty of Satchel’s face-melting guitar.
The catfishing saga On Your Instagram is the first of several power ballads Steel Panther chalks up here, something that brings the overall pace of On the Prowl down from previous efforts, although the love letter to the glory days of 1987 as Starr drops references to GNR, Poison, Coverdale doing it with Tawny Kitaen and other wonderful moments of one of the peak years of 80s hard rock is a clear highlight. Certainly those of us who can remember thinking they might be gay after looking at the cover of Look What the Cat Dragged In can relate. Ain’t Dead Yet is a bluesy acoustic jam that’s almost sad, a marked departure from what we’ve generally come to expect, somewhat representative of the modicum of restraint Steel Panther show with this release.
Satchel’s playing is as stratospheric as ever and Michael Starr is suffering no apparently ill effects from his vocal chord surgery, but On the Prowl shows distinct signs of a party band slowing down just a little, from the liberal use of synths to more slower paced numbers. They are still one entertaining unit and if anything the humour is more effective this time by not relying on overwhelming amounts of smut or Starr just saying “fuck” a lot, but it all sort of runs out of steam before the end.
On the Prowl hardly rates as Steel Panther’s finest moment but it has some great playing, especially if you enjoy bursts of blow-your-face-out guitar explosions, and a few good laugh-out-loud moments, as always.
