The Cult promised a re-imagining of heavy metal in 1985 when they fringed raging guitar riffs with psychedelic tassels and shoegazer moodiness on Love. But by the time of their next album, Electric, they had shed their paisleys in favor of biker leather, and swapped surging, impassioned anthems in favor of plodding metal riffs. On their latest album, Born Into This, the Cult slathers on the rock-rebellion attitude like a teenager slathering on Brut. Ian Astbury remains one of the great power singers, but now that he's in his mid-forties, I'm not sure I'm buying him singing about "Dirty Little Rockstars." It's one of the many fist-waving tirades on Born Into This that also includes an anti-war screed, "Tiger in the Sun." They take a stab at a rock ballad with the Elvis Presley-meets-Johnny Cash brooding of "Holy Mountain," but it comes off as a genre exercise. Despite having Youth at the production desk, and deploying some ferocious guitar by Billy Duffy across big, piston shredding beats, the Cult ultimately sound like a good metal band, when they initially prophesied so much more. --John Diliberto