The Foo Fighters are a band that proudly displays their influences, like the punk rock fan with their ironed-on patches of their favorite musicians that adorn their denim jacket.

Sometimes this translates well, like their 2014 album “Sonic Highways,” which had them travel across the United States to record a song in eight different cities. This album showed a diverse range of musical stylings and properly captured the spirit of each city. However, the dissonance of each song made the album a bit muddled in terms of the message.

The latest release by the Foo Fighters, “Concrete and Gold,” is more thematically coherent. It’s an album of frustrations- lead singer Dave Grohl’s frustrations to be precise. While it continues the sound of “Sonic Highways,” “Concrete and Gold,” also ventures into different realms of influence. The song “Sunday Rain” seems like a lost Beatles cut, largely in part to Paul McCartney playing drums on the track.

Lead single “Run” starts the album on a fast note, building to a screaming refrain from Grohl that displays the singer’s penchant for soothing vocals and primal yells.LINK or EMBED: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ifw…

The second single released for the album, “The Sky is a Neighborhood” cements Grohl’s anger at the current state of affairs. “Mind is a battlefield/All hope is gone/Trouble to the right and left/Whose side you’re on?”

The album suffers from a lack of energy in some of the songs, with most tracks having a slower tempo and a less driving force than the usual Foo Fighters’ sound. Some of the calmer songs work for the album, like the rare, fully acoustic “Happy Ever After (Zero Hour),” but when song after song toward the end starts coming in at a slower rate, the pace becomes detrimental to the quality of the album.

Overall, Grohl manages to keep the band relevant sound-wise while paying homage to their influences. Though “Concrete and Gold” shows some visible signs of a band slowing down, it also captures a band that refuses to give up.

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