Tesla were always slightly misplaced in the scene that made them famous. They emerged during the commercial peak of eighties hard rock and were inevitably filed beside the hair-metal bands, but their instincts reached further back. Aerosmith, Bad Company, the Faces, blues and seventies American rock were more fundamental to their sound than the polished excess of the Sunset Strip.
Shock, their first studio album in five years, complicates that identity in an interesting way. Phil Collen of Def Leppard produced and co-wrote the record, bringing a far more polished approach to a band traditionally associated with a rougher, rootsier sound. At times his fingerprints are impossible to miss. The surprise is how often Tesla survive the transformation intact.
"You Won't Take Me Alive" establishes the basic compromise. The guitars are large, the chorus is even larger and gospel accents give the arrangement additional scale, but Jeff Keith's battered voice immediately prevents the song from becoming anonymous. A smoother singer might have disappeared into the production. Keith sounds as though the polish has been applied around him rather than to him.
The Def Leppard connection becomes more obvious on "Taste Like", where stacked production and a huge chorus recall the Mutt Lange school of hard rock. It is hardly subtle, and the reference points are easy to identify, but the song works because Tesla still bring enough grit to keep the surfaces from becoming antiseptic.
That push and pull between identity and outside influence runs throughout Shock. "We Can Rule the World" reaches toward Queen with piano, synthesizers and theatrical scale. The title track favors a modern mid-tempo chug and processed drums. Elsewhere, familiar Tesla traits return: slide guitar, acoustic textures, blues phrasing and choruses built for the stage rather than the studio.
The most interesting songs are often the ones that move furthest from expectation. "California Summer Song" is loose, sunny and almost funky, with handclaps and an easy chorus that would not require any knowledge of Tesla's history to make sense. "Forever Loving You" takes another route, building around acoustic guitar and a minor-key melody with a trace of the Beatles in its harmonic character.
Those songs show why the band's seventies foundations remain useful. Tesla can move into pop, country or more contemporary production because their music was never dependent on one narrow eighties formula. "Tied to the Tracks" brings Keith's voice against wicked slide guitar, while "Afterlife" introduces mandolin and harmonized guitars before expanding into another large chorus.
There are moments when Collen's influence pushes too far. Certain backing vocals, guitar treatments and arrangement choices make the reference to Def Leppard more obvious than it needs to be, while "Love Is a Fire" stays close enough to familiar power-ballad territory that it adds relatively little to the record. Shock is at its strongest when the production enlarges Tesla rather than reshaping them.
The underlying songs are sturdy enough to tolerate the experimentation. "I Want Everything" combines a Cheap Trick-like melodic instinct with a riff that gives the guitars room to take over toward the end, and "Comfort Zone" begins with an almost alternative-rock bass feel before returning to the broader hard-rock language the band understands so well.
What matters is that Shock doesn't feel like an album made simply because a veteran touring act needed new merchandise. There are choruses worth keeping, riffs that deserve a place in the live set and several moments where the band willingly moves outside its most familiar territory.
Tesla's influences remain audible—sometimes too audible—but that has always been part of their identity. The difference here is that seventies blues rock, eighties hard rock, nineties alternative textures and Collen's highly polished production all occupy the same record. The seams occasionally show, yet Jeff Keith's voice and the band's fundamental looseness hold it together. Four decades into their career, Tesla still sound less attached to an era than their reputation suggests.
GENRE: Hard Rock
RELEASE DATE: March 8, 2019
PRODUCED BY: Phil Collen
LABEL: UMe
RATING: 7/10