There is plenty to like about the new side project for celebrity drummer and Foo Fighter, Dave Grohl.

Probot is what he calls it.

Personally metal is not my cup of tea. The growling vocals and the distorted metal guitars just doesn't sit, and has never sat, well with my rather happy middle-class upbringing. I could never relate to the "torn jeans, long hair and black shirts" set when I was at highschool. My tendancy to deal in stereotypes here should make it clear just how badly I don't get it.

If your the sort of person who reads a site like this and goes "Yeah wicked! This site has mp3s from the new Elbow album! Oh look! The new Sodastream album!" then you are probably in the same boat as myself. People like you and me, never quite understood where the attraction was with heavy metal.

Thats why the Probot album is great. It's metal for all the kids that never quite got it. Which is probably also why it will attract nothing but scorn from real long time die hard metal heads. For the rest of us though, the fact that Dave Grohl is the brains and song writer behind this collaboration of some of the biggest names in heavy music, is enough to ensure we will give it a listen. The fact that nothing of the core songwriting here would seem particularly out of place on a Foo Fighters album will probably mean that even the kids that would normally regard this sort of material too heavy, will give this album more then just a passing glance. The fact that Grohl, ever the funny man of modern rock music, has his tongue planted lightly in his cheek right throughout is also helpful for indie kids trying to consume this heavy metal fare. The last few seconds of "Centuries of Sin" is some of the funniest shit i've heard in a song in a long time, and the only deliberately funny thing i've ever heard in a metal song. Everything feels a ton lighter and sounds many decibels softer when you realise that Dave Grohl is not being completely serious in this project.

However this is not a Foo Fighters album. Dave Grohl doesn't do any of the singing. He has rounded up the biggest names in contemporary metal to come in and do the vocals. Pleasingly though, there is none of the unintelligble growling that normally marks heavy metal music. You can even hear the lyrics most of the time. And while the songs have some melody and a pleasing tune to them, they are still very much played in a metal way differentiating this from a Foo Fighters album.

Probot - Centuries Of Sin 192kbps, 5.7mb
Probot - Shake Your Blood 192kbps, 4.1
Probot - Silent Spring 192kbps, 4.8