When The World Comes Down The All American Rejects

At some point around the implosion of nu-metal and the saturation of pop-punk, and the rise and fall of emo, fattened and emboldened by social media, the everyone’s-a-critic mentality of today was born. And at some point along this journey, we (and by we, I mean fans of rock and metal music) seem to have lost sight of the fact that music is allowed to be fun. Not every album has to be artsy or earnest, have multi-layered meanings, shrewdly analyse and dissect the sociopolitical context of our times, or be the right style and sound to be accepted. We need to challenge the now common mindset that there are sub-genres and styles that are cool and allowed, and others to be sneered at. Steel Panther may be an arena selling, festival sub-headlining band, but anyone who is anyone in the taste police is falling over themselves, still, ten years on, to slap ‘em back down.

Extreme athlete turned government operative Xander Cage (Vin Diesel) comes out of self-imposed exile, thought to be long dead, and is set on a collision course with deadly alpha warrior Xiang (Donnie Yen) and his team in a race to recover a sinister and seemingly unstoppable weapon known as Pandora's Box. Recruiting an all-new group of thrill-seeking cohorts, Xander finds himself enmeshed in a deadly conspiracy that points to collusion at the highest levels of world governments.