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Reviews > Queen + Paul Rodgers Music Reviews > 09-21-2008 - The Cosmos Rocks - Sunday Mercury (Birmingham, England)

Album of the Week
by Paul Cole & Anuji Varma

HOW d'you replace the irreplaceable? You don't. When Brian May and Roger Taylor resurrect Queen, they could have taken the easy option and recruited Mika, or even Justin Hawkins as their new Freddie.

They plumped instead for former Free frontman Paul Rodgers, whose bluesbased rock vocal is every bit as iconic as May's guitar figures. With such strong trademarks, Queen's first studio set in 15 years was always going to be tough.

The purists will hate it but there's enough here to suggest that while they won't rock the cosmos, they'll certainly shake a few rafters. The title track opener seeks to decieve, an old-fashioned rock'n'roller sounding for all the world like ELO, a nostalgia trip they take again on Bad Company clones Call Me and Warboys.

In fact, the likes of Voodoo, Small, and Through The Night, find Rodgers so much to the fore you could be mistaken for thinking that it's actually his album.

But at last power ballad Say It's Not True ushers in that Queen pomp, Surf's Up Schools Out recalls the band's early days, and the Eastern hint in Time To Shine reminds you who you're dealing with. The Queen is dead, long live the Queen.