The KillersTitle: Sam’s TownLabel: Island RecordsGenre: Alternative, RockReleased: October 2006Rating: * *

With such a celebrated album as Hot Fuss (Lizard King Records) coming from The Killers, you’d expect a stellar musical experience with their new album, Sam’s Town (Island Records), released on October 3rd.

Unfortunately for those of us who have eagerly anticipated this release, Sam’s Town is not all that we hoped it would be. Members Brandon Flowers (Vox, Synthesizer), David Keuning (Guitars), Mark Stoermer (Bass) and Ronnie Vannucci (Drums), who won an MTV Video Music Award for Best New Artist (2005) and were nominated for Billboard Music Award’s Group of the Year (2005) and American Music Award’s Favorite New Artist (2005), have released an album with a sound vastly different from their debut release which reached #13 on the World Chart.

The only truly notable tracks on Sam’s Town are the title track “Sam’s Town” and their first single “When You Were Young” with their extremely catchy rhythmic sounds.

“Read My Mind” provides a relaxing melody, where Flowers says “I never really gave up on breaking out of this two-star town,” which ironically is precisely how many stars Sam’s Town gets from this reviewer.

With the two piano pieces, “Enterlude” and “Exitlude” Flowers displays his inability to sing and stay on pitch with sustained notes.

The Killers’ next single “Bones” starts off promising with an upbeat and catchy tune but fizzles out into bland noise.

“Uncle Johnny” and “Why Do I Keep Counting” stand out a little more by being different than most modern music, each having a chorus that draws the listener in, but the majority of the songs are just painful to listen to, especially “My List” where the harmony makes you wish this album had one less track.

Normally, the bonus tracks are reserved for those songs that are somewhat decent but not quite good enough to be included in the main album but in this case the bonus tracks “Where the White Boys Dance” and “All the Pretty Faces” are better than the rest of the album collectively. Sam’s Town can be best described as boring, mundane and monotonous.

Its only saving grace is the somewhat catchy hooks each song provides, but even those start to sound the same after just a short while.