The Clash’s ‘Combat Rock’ Anniversary Edition Revamps the Group’s Flawed, Fiery Swan Song: Album Review
variety.comJem Aswad Senior Music Editor“Combat Rock” is the Clash’s most commercially successful album, and it’s also the one that tore them apart.
Although it contains their two most-popular songs — “Should I Stay or Should I Go” and “Rock the Casbah”— and made them into one of the world’s biggest bands, it’s a disjointed, confusing album, with three absolutely killer tracks, a handful of middling ones and a bunch of indulgent solo experiments.
And although a similar assessment could be made of this album’s predecessor, 1980’s sprawling triple-disc “Sandinista!,” time has been kinder to that set’s ambition.
Still, even though this 40th anniversary edition of the Clash’s fifth full-length — which also includes a bonus disc of concurrent material — shows that its flaws have not aged well, it’s still a document of one of rock’s greatest-ever bands going out in a blaze of glory, even if no one realized it at the time.
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