Whew! Hi everyone, Foothony Footano here, the internet's busiest music nerd, and it's time for a review of this new Foo Fighters album, Your Favorite Toy.

Your Favorite Toy is the 12th full-length album of legendary rock band Foo Fighters, who are now 30 years deep into their career. And this is also their first record to feature the band's new drummer, Ilan Rubin – who has played before with Nine Inch Nails – replacing, of course, the recently released Josh Freese. And yeah, it's also the follow-up to their 2023 album, but here we are.

Clocking in at 36 very trim minutes, this is Foo Fighters' shortest record to date, beating Medicine at Midnight by 9 seconds, apparently. And Dave Grohl has said in the creative process for this record, he and the band demoed dozens and dozens and dozens of songs, eventually kind of like reading a new record in the tea leaves of all of these tracks, and Dave being more drawn to the cuts among these demos that were like the most explosive, aggressive, and loud. So – shorter, louder, faster, more aggressive. New direction for a new record, a new era for Foo Fighters.

And at this point, maybe that is warranted, especially considering just how much change the band has gone through in recent years with the passing of longtime drummer Taylor Hawkins, something their last full-length LP very much reflected on, on a lot of melancholic tracks. Not to mention that near the end of 2024, Dave Grohl announced on his Instagram page that he fathered a child outside of his marriage, which of course put a lot of hurt onto his and the band's reputation. And again, changing drummers once more. Josh Freese's public comments on this, uh, haven't really brought much to light, as he seemed just as surprised as everyone else by this sudden change.

But either way, Dave Grohl wasn't lying. The material on this new album is definitely the loudest and fastest and most aggressive Foo Fighters has sounded in years. A lot of the distortion and volume on these tracks are just slammed in the mix so hard. If Dave's vocals aren't peaking and screaming and saturated, they are at least decked out in a little bit of fuzz for a kind of harsh edge. And again, this is not a move I mind, especially given the very emotional album cycle that preceded this one.

Also, let's take into account that blasted-out, sunburnt tracks like "White Limo" have become fan favorites in recent years. And, y'know, I would much rather Foo Fighters make an attempt at doing something with some oomph rather than drop another record as boring and as gutless as Sonic Highways.

But when we actually dig into the deeper cuts of this album, not only does its tracklist contain songs that are just as underwhelming and as uninteresting as a lot of tracks on Sonic Highways, be it either "Unconditional" or "Window," a track I'm sure many will read as having grunge vibes, but it feels less grunge and more like the hollowed-out post-grunge version of the genre that it quickly evolved into after the tragic passing of Kurt Cobain.

Another meh cut on the record is "If You Only Knew," a song that, on the surface, sounds very loud, but the only thing about it that has any bite to it truly is the super stacked, overinflated volume. And the more I hear it, the more it just feels at odds with itself, because at its core, in terms of the writing, the guitar playing, the performance, it's not that fast and it's not that, I guess you would say, angry of a track in terms of its presentation. And yet the artificial boosting of its volume and its distortion makes it about as harsh to the ear as a really experimental noise rock track. I mean, if this song was going to work, it would probably have to be decked out in production that's maybe more along the lines of tracks on But Here We Are.

And that's really the core issue with the album: this presentation that comes across as just so fiery and so visceral, but then the writing and the performances just feel kind of on autopilot. The song "Child Actor," for example, the constant repetition of "turn the cameras off" on the chorus, I feel like Dave turned his brain off for this hook. It's crazy that this is the same guy who not too long ago was, like, the master of the radio single, tracks that simultaneously had a sentimental but rocking edge.

And the track "Caught in the Echo," the opener of the record, is not much better. I mean, sure, those opening guitar lines do hit, but eventually that hot bath grows lukewarm and all we're left with are a bunch of repetitive lyrical clichés. And maybe, again, this is due to Dave kind of like convincing himself this is Foo Fighters' punk record, so he can just simply simplify and streamline every aspect about the writing and the lyrics, and it'll just work by virtue of sheer force.

But Your Favorite Toy doesn't really have that much force to it, or swagger either. Maybe if Dave and the band were bringing a level of charisma that was along the lines of The Stooges or Lou Reed or, I don't know, The Modern Lovers, it would work. But truth be told, this record is pretty deficient on that front.

I will say Dave's pen game and the emotion behind his writing is pretty seething and angry on the song "Of All People," which might really be the best track here because the emotion really does match the sound on this track, as Dave is kind of wishing death upon this dude who he knew from back in the '90s, who is still around and used to be this guy who, according to him, was getting all of his friends hooked on drugs like heroin. And he's essentially making this internal monolog about this, like, "How dare you survive this era when there were actually many people who I knew and loved who are pretty much dead and gone because of people like you?" Unfortunately, there aren't really many other tracks on this record where it feels like Dave is putting his all into it, or he's writing this song because of a burning fire he just has to answer to.

Meanwhile, "Spit Shine" is maybe the fastest and loudest track on the entire record. Almost some post-hardcore vibes coming off this one, but Dave's frantic vocal leads on the verses just feel really awkward and grating to listen to. I don't know if it's just the point that he's at now in his career, or if this is just something that has always been a characteristic in his songwriting, but vocally and lyrically on this record, I feel like he's just not an artist who sees any benefit out of trying to really let loose in an unpredictable, noisy, and unkempt way.

Maybe this is something that could change into the future at some point, but when I think of the best moments within the Dave Grohl / Foo Fighters catalog, it's usually tracks that are very methodically written and planned out, and have a super clean presentation and progression to them.

And on some level, while Your Favorite Toy is definitely trying to break out of those constraints through faster pacing, and through louder mixes, the predictability and relative safeness in comparison to anything else happening on the rock scene right now kinda betrays all of that, making this record a much more uninteresting listen than it should have been if its ultimate goal was to be this complete blowout of an LP. Which is really why I'm feeling like a light 4 on this one, honestly.

Anthony Fantano. Foo Fighters. Forever.