Recycler

Occupation

• Billy Gibbons: Vocals, Guitar
• Dusty Hill: vocals, bass
• Frank Beard: Drums

Recycler is the tenth studio album by American blues-rock band ZZ Top. It was released in March 1990 on Warner Bros. Records. The album received in 1991 in the U.S. platinum for one million units sold.

Formation

With the album, the band of the electronic influences on " Eliminator " and " Afterburner" turned away and returned to the blues-rock of the 1970s. The pieces created during various jam sessions, which the band played with the existing equipment in the studio, because their own technology had not yet been delivered. As a result of these sessions, the bluesiest pieces were written for a long time. The album title " Recycler" is an allusion to the interest of the band members in the reconstruction of classic cars. For the first time the band moved into position to protect the environment by noted on the record that only 10 years had to save the planet. This goes back to drummer Frank Beard, who wanted to offer a place to live at the time his five year old twin sons in the future. After this album, the commercial success of the band began to subside. Singer and guitarist Billy Gibbons commented in a 2005 interview that the music business would be a constant up and down and that it was more important to him to make music and go on tour.

Title list

All tracks were written by the band collectively.

Reception

Stephen Thomas Erlewine of Allmusic expressed his incomprehension at the fact that the band followed up its chosen path with this album five years after "Afterburner ". The beats are weak and the guitar licks did not deserve the designation reef. He also complains that the band is the irony of the album title was not aware ( recycler referred to in American English a recycler ). In contrast, praised John Swenson from Rolling Stone magazine in its contemporary Review abandoning the synthesizer sound of the previous albums and called it a " technical masterpiece ", the " constructed around the extraordinary diversity of Gibbons guitar textures " is. Uwe Deese from Rock Hard sees the album as a cross -section of the creative period 1972 until 1985. The band shine with bluesy songs like " My Head 's in Mississippi ", but bored with "disco compatible " titles such as " Give It Up " and "Double Back".