After listening to the umpteenth nu-metal vocalist whining about his parents abusing him, you start thinking his parents had the right idea. If just one drunken father had used a gun instead of a fist, we might have might have been spared the music of Korn or Coal Chamber. Andrew W.K. comes as a welcome reprieve to all the rap-metal polluting the airwaves. Yes, his music is ridiculously silly, but I'd pick I Get Wet over Three Dollar Bill, Ya'll any day of the week.

I resisted listening to Andrew W.K.s work for quite some time quite simply due to the overwhelming amount of hype he received. I could appreciate his music was intended to be lighthearted fun, but there are only so many times you can read reviews proclaiming Andrew W.K. to be the savior of rock music before getting a little tired of it all. With his songs constantly appearing in movies and commercials, I was getting sick of him before even listening to his album.

I finally gave in and gave I Get Wet a shot. I don't think it's another Appetite for Destruction or Shout at the Devil. It's not even another Two Steps from the Move or Tattooed Beat Messiah. But as a far as pop-metal confectioneries go, it's a decent effort. At the very least, it was good enough to make me look forward to his next album.

However, Andrew W.K.'s second album The Wolf is a considerably different affair. Most notably, the speed of the first album is pretty much gone. If you liked all the up-tempo rockers on I Get Wet, prepare to be disappointed. Aside from the beginning of "Long Live the Party" all the songs here are considerably slower, making Andrew W.K. and his band sound like a heavier REO Speedwagon or a slightly more rockin' Night Ranger. The lyrics once again focus on love, partying, and following your dreams, but that's pretty much the only indication that this is the same man who released I Get Wet. Even if you're a hardcore Andrew W.K. fan, you should listen to some samples from the album first so you know what you're getting into.

So, has Andrew W.K. avoided the sophomore slump? It's difficult to say. If you believe that Def Leppard's "Love Bites" is the greatest song of all time, this album will seem like the Second Coming of Christ. However, I think in the attempt to get out of the corner he painted himself into with I Get Wet, he made too many changes to his sound. I like the fact that Andrew W.K. included prominent guitar solos on The Wolf. I also like the fact that the songs have more of an identity to them; a lot of the tunes on the first album sounded pretty interchangeable. Unfortunately, this album is such a change from I Get Wet that for me at least, it's a disappointment. I would have been willing to put up with a few slow songs had there been some out-and-out rock songs. What I got was album that seems custom-made for people who like holding their lighters in the air for 40 minutes, or who want to hear what it would sound like if Tony Robbins ever decided to unleash the power ballad within. Sure, there's of talk about getting the party started on The Wolf, but for me, it never really got beyond hanging up a couple streamers.

Andrew W.K. seems like a really great human being, and anyone who would give a job to former Obituary drummer Donald Tardy is OK in my book. But if he doesn't want to be headlining small venues 10 years from now or worse yet, become this millennium's Buckcherry, he needs to go back to what he's good at. If he combines his improved songwriting skills with the kind of music on I Get Wet, his third album will be a monster. The Wolf, though, really comes as a disappointment.