Somebody once told us that the world was going to roll us, but we didn’t believe them until today, when the musical persisters of Smash Mouth unleashed their latest song and sent us spinning: “Love Is A Soldier,” an electronic club track that sounds exactly like what you’d expect from “Smash Mouth goes EDM.”
Produced in collaboration with a DJ named Specter, the song is undeniably a hot Mouth jam, featuring warbly bass, Steve Harwell’s enthusiastic yell-singing, and lyrics like “Sex is a gun, you’re ammunition.” But on top of that, we’ve got pounding synths and bass, and the ever-present ”Ahhh-ahhhs” of that one woman they keep in a dungeon so she can wail on bad EDM tracks.
And yet, “Love Is A Soldier” is also recognizably Smash Mouthian in another sense, in that it’s hatefully addictive. Smash Mouth carved out a niche for itself by being the high-fructose corn syrup of rock-pop, and that same capacity to circumvent taste and fascinate our stupid lizard brains is still in evidence on “Soldier.” We can just imagine a whole crowd of hyped up rave kids getting down da down down to Harwell’s horrible lyrics, blissing to the submission demolition and pelting each other with bread.