'King of the Ladies' (Bettencourt, Cherone, Anthony J. 'Learn to Love' (Bettencourt, Cherone, Kevin Figueiredo)
'Comfortably Dumb' (Bettencourt, Cherone) Additional videos were shot for the songs 'Interface,' 'Run,' and 'Ghost,' which were released in 2010 on the Extreme DVD Take Us Alive. However, the song and accompanying video for 'King of the Ladies' reached #4 on the AOL Video Charts in 2010, according to Billboard. I’ll take this over the new Walkmen album any day.The album's lead single, 'Star,' failed to chart in the U.S. But whether you are a hair metal holdout who considered Cherone and the boys to be the closest you’ll ever come to listening to alternative rock, or a total rockist snob terrified to admit that “Kid Ego” is in heavy rotation on his or her iPod to your buddies at Sound Fix, one simply cannot deny the strength of Extreme’s new material on Saudades de Rock. In this era of Viceland-ish postmodern irony, it certainly is deemed far cooler to wear on old Extreme shirt out on the town in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, than it is to listen to their new record.
And while his late ‘90s solo career saw him return to his humble beginnings playing podunk dive bars to sometimes fewer than 20 people at a clip, songs such as the hard-driving, Pink Floyd-title-aping “Comfortably Dumb” and the slithering Zep-funk of “Run” show that Bettencourt wants to sell out arenas again, or at least amphitheatres, and dazzle audiences with guitar skills that belong right up there in recognition with that of Kirk Hammett and Eddie Van Halen. His recent collaboration with Perry Farrell on his ill-fated Satellite Party project (which sounded so much better on paper than on record, truthfully) and his quixotic work on the soundtrack to the 2008 Thomas Hayden Church/Dennis Quaid/Sarah Jessica Parker/Ellen Page indie dramedy Smart People all kept his chops in the picture. Having found the most post-Extreme success of all four members (excluding original drummer Paul Geary, who left the group in 1994 and was replaced by former Annihilator drummer Kevin Figueiredo), Bettencourt has proven over the last few years why he was the catalyst for the band’s unorthodox approach to classic American glam metal. There isn’t a more underrated guitarist in hard rock than Nuno, who managed to combine the grandiosity of Queen’s Brian May, the soul of Eddie Hazel, and the complexity of Frank Zappa with equal aplomb. Of course, as always, the star of the show is guitarist Bettencourt, setting such tracks as “Learn to Love” and “Flower Man” on fire with his lightning-quick six-string precision. Heavier and more confrontational than anything the band has ever done, Saudades de Rock finds the group in peak performance after a decade-plus hiatus, their last album the 1995 A&M swan song Waiting for the Punchline. In Bettencourt’s native Portuguese, the album title translates to “Nostalgic yearning for rock”, and Saudades sates the group’s desire to remind folks that they were far more dynamic a band than the “hair metal” stereotype out-of-touch journalists and media pundits handed down to them in the ‘90s. Though perennially tagged as “hair metal”, Extreme were more of a glam-tastic, East Coast extension of the funky LA-based alt-metal scene that spawned Jane’s Addiction and Red Hot Chili Peppers, and Saudades de Rock will remind you why you liked such albums as 1990’s Pornograffiti and 1992’s ambitious III Sides to a Story despite the heckles of your wanna-be-hip grunge pals. Saudades de Rock (which roughly translates from Portuguese as "Nostalgic Yearnings of Rock") is Extreme 's fifth studio album, released on August 12, 2008.