One of the key rules of is there are some artists you can never count out -- no matter how many lame records they may make, no matter how misguided their career direction might seem, they always hold the promise that they'll jump back in the loop and deliver the goods again. delivered a solid one-two punch (for the first time in a while) with and in 1990 and 1993, but after ten years and three major duds in a row (the uninspired and the strikingly faulty ), you just had to wonder if maybe the World's Forgotten Boy had finally lost the magic touch for good. Of course, 's career had always offered plenty of opportunities for such thinking, and just as he had in the past, came back to shut down the disbelievers with a solid slice of prime called . The big news is that, on four cuts, marks 's first studio collaboration with since in 1973, and thankfully 's gloriously primal guitar riffs sound as brilliant as ever, and mix with 's bestial wail like gin and tonic; if don't quite pick up where left off, they make it clear the monster that is can still shake the Earth when they have a notion. If the rest of doesn't quite reach the same level of solar plexus impact as the cuts, flies high enough on the juice that this set blasts like an M-80 from start to finish; 's road band, , redeem themselves after their cringe-worthy debut on , - diva proves she's just libidinous enough to keep up with (and they goad one another into truly glorious rudeness), back the godfather of with spunk, enthusiasm, and lots of energy, and even give as good as they get (which is a lot more than you might expect from them). doesn't always capture at his best as a lyricist, but here what he says isn't half as important as how he says it, and he hasn't sounded this right -- and had music this potent backing him up -- in a decade, and the result is a big, sweaty, high-octane session from a guy who practically defined the form. Like I said, you can't ever count out, and demonstrates why. ~ Mark Deming