Pink Cream 69 - Food For Thought
Massacre Records
Melodic Hard Rock with Alternative leanings
14 songs (49'56)
Release year: 1997
Pink Cream 69, Massacre Records
Reviewed by Ben
Archive review

Face it, almost every band out there, even those that you love have released album that make you just go, “Man, what the hell were they thinking?”. I know this has happened to me quite a few times and another purpose of the archives is to get albums out there to the readers and in a way, warn them. Now as you can see by my quote, Food For Thought isn’t god awful but it definitely isn’t Pink Cream 69’s best offering by a long shot. The album before this, Change, is about as bad as you can get however. It was a horrible conglomeration of grunge / alternative / modern blend of confusion with only one truly great song on it, Yesterdays. With the departure of Andi Deris, his replacement David Readman didn’t exactly endear himself to old school Pink Cream 69 fans with Change and on Food For Thought he didn’t win them over yet again. It wasn’t until Electrified when the band became a lean melodic hard rock machine that surpassed even the Deris years, but that is for another story on another day. The music on Food For Thought is a more refined mix of their old sound, melodic hard rock, and modern influences like grunge and alternative stylings. There are a few tracks on here that the experimentation works well on, but in general it just falls flat on its face.

Two of the rock / grunge hybrids song that work really well are the up tempo Big Shot and the anthemic Until I Wake. These are two really stand out cuts on here with sweet choruses, a terrific performance by David, and a tight musical standpoint from the band. I can even forgive the Pinkies for their use of slap bass in Until I Wake because the song is so good, that little mishap can be overlooked. Big Shot on the other hand is a short, to the point, poppy rocker that is over before it begins and just begs you to play it again. Actually, this song has less grunge overtones to it cos it is so short and to the point so maybe that’s why I like it so much. I’m sad to say though that those are the only two rocker songs that are a good listening experience here though as the rest of the non-substandard songs are ballads. They might be ballads, but they are excellent ballads nonetheless. Diggin’ Through The Past is a nice, somber, bluesy type of song and Pass You By is an almost pop like ballad with great hooks throughout. Another ballad, that I swear to God would have been the biggest hit back in 1997 is Better Days. Much like Yesterdays off of Change this song is miles above the rest of the album and stands out like a sore thumb. I mean this song competes with the best of Pink Cream 69 today, it is in the same echelon as Face of an Angel, Speed of Light, King of My World, and Shame. A truly classic song in the bands catalog, it contains a great clean guitar tone that pulsates with a vibrant energy, and rich emotive vocals from David Readman that along with the guitars drive this song in a smooth and slick fashion and are backed up by a chorus that is instantly stuck in your mind upon your first impression. Honorable mentions must also go to Sorry, and I’m betting you already guessed by the name that it’s another ballad. While technically there are, six killing songs on here there’s something wrong if they are almost all ballads. Now don’t get me wrong, to me a ballad is a great and necessary part of many melodic hard rock / metal bands but they shouldn’t be the only thing about the album that I like. Its not hard to come to that conclusion though when the rest of the album has songs that make you think of Pearl Jam with the sloppy guitar tone and the too “look at us we can change with the times too, we can be alternative” production job. Plus there’s even a grunge version of Queen’s We Will Rock You, yea trust me its not that good. At all.

Overall, Food For Thought comes off as an album that is obvious that the band is trying too hard to be more modern and en vogue but ends up with a confusing mess of sounds. While not horrible, this doesn’t rise above medium territory and newcomers to the band should check out their other albums, Electrified, Sonic Dynamite, Endangered, and Games People Play first. Come back to this one after you’ve been exposed to the REAL Pink Cream 69 cos otherwise if someone heard this, or Change first they wouldn’t give the band the time of day they deserve.

Killing Songs :
Big Shot, Until I Wake, and Better Days
Ben quoted 55 / 100
Other albums by Pink Cream 69 that we have reviewed:
Pink Cream 69 - In10sity reviewed by Mike and quoted 84 / 100
Pink Cream 69 - Mixery reviewed by Ben and quoted no quote
Pink Cream 69 - Live reviewed by Ben and quoted no quote
Pink Cream 69 - Electrified reviewed by Ben and quoted 93 / 100
Pink Cream 69 - Pink Cream 69 reviewed by Ben and quoted 75 / 100
To see all 11 reviews click here
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