Meet the Meatbats

As vanity projects go, the snappily named Chad Smith’s Bombastic Meatbats is up there with the worst of them. Not content with drumming for the Red Hot Chili Peppers and ‘supergroup’ Chickenfoot, the Meatbats are our hero’s instrumental funk band and Meat The Meatbats is their unfortunately ill-advised debut. If listening to the soundtrack of Starsky & Hutch on constant repeat is your idea of fun, then you might find something of merit on the record. But the rest of you will no doubt be turned off by the endless guitar wizardry, the drums that are way too high in the mix and the lack of any real substance. This one’s strictly for completists.