The Hellacopters - Overdriver (2025)

Country: Sweden
Style: Garage Rock
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 31 Jan 2025
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Wikipedia | YouTube

This ninth album from the Hellacopters runs forty minutes, hardly the longest album I've put on this week but certainly not skimpy with its music. However, every time it finishes, it feels like I've only been listening for about ten minutes. Its eleven tracks zoom on by, only two of them lasting longer than four minutes. When they actually pick up a serious pace, like with Wrong Face On, it seems like the track is done in about thirty seconds. I'd listened to it five times before noon and that's just ridiculous for me.

Initially it's good but not great, because the first three songs are just solid and reliable garage rock songs that do exactly what they must without grabbing me by the feels. Maybe that's due to a reliance on sixties pop melodies. Wrong Face On has that uptick in tempo and then Soldier On caught my attention. It's a strong song but that's not why it stood out. It stood out because the influences that I caught weren't the ones that I would have expected from a Hellacopters album. And I don't mean the core riff that's borrowed from Golden Earring's Radar Love.

I expected them to sound like a garage rock band, as indeed they do on much of this album. Check out Faraway Looks, for instance, and you'll find that it's utterly textbook garage rock, built from power chords, flurried beats, a simple but effective riff, punchy vocals and catchy melodies. Sure, there's a little back and forth harmonising that reminds of Blue Öyster Cult and that adds to the effect, but it's mostly what I expect, done really well by a band who have been doing this for over thirty years.

Soldier On, however, has a real southern rock mindset to it and it's far from the only such song on the album. That feel returns on Coming Down, shows up in the melodies on The Stench and then in the epic guitar solo on Leave a Mark that eventually finds that patented southern rock chicken scratch style. It's in moments like that where Lynyrd Skynyrd spring to mind, but the comparison I kept coming back to was The Outlaws, because it's not just the guitarwork, it's the melodies.

Now, Soldier On has odd vocal manipulations in the verses, but that Outlaws sound is unmissable once they get to the bridges and choruses. And, once it's out there, this genie can't be put back into the bottle. It's there on Doomsday Daydreams, it's all over Coming Down like a rash and it's there on later songs, whether it's in the vocal melodies, the builds or the guitars or all of these things together. It frankly changed this album for me and, while I dug punkier garage rock songs like Wrong Face On and Faraway Looks, I liked these dips into southern rock even more.

I'd probably rank Coming Down at the top of the heap, but with Leave a Mark nipping at its heels, especially with its epic guitar solo at the end to stretch it out to five minutes and change. That's a long song for the Hellacopters, even kicking off with a bass intro that's not far off what Lemmy used to do back in his Hawkwind days. I'm not finding a line-up online, so I don't know if this is the work of Dolf DeBorst, who Wikipedia tells me joined in 2018 but doesn't appear on any albums, a contradictory statement given that this is their second album since reforming in 2016.

Doomsday Daydreams keeps growing on me, so I'd throw that in there as another highlight, and, back in more traditional territory, Faraway Looks and Wrong Face On are right up there as well. I'd usually call an album with five highlights out of eleven a gimme for an recommended 8/10 rating, but Soldier On, with its southern rock flavour, and The Stench with a bluesier version of the same, are the only others that I like a lot. That means four songs that are just there, including the first three, which is an odd state of affairs, and that's telling too.

Then I realised that I've listened through this album maybe eight or nine times now and, even if some songs still refuse to pop for me, I haven't felt the need to skip any of them even once. That firmed this back up as an 8/10. I haven't heard its predecessor, 2022's Eyes of Oblivion, but I'd say on the basis of this one that the band are really enjoying their reunion and maybe feeling some flexibility in their sound. DeBorst aside, if indeed that's him on bass, everyone else is long term.

Nicke Andersson, Robert Eriksson and Dregen were founder members, even if the latter left for quite a while. Anders Lindström only missed the first few years but has been there ever since. I'd say they're having a blast and, while I like them doing what they've always done, I can only hope that they keep exploring this southern rock direction. Coming Down and Leave a Mark especially show that they do it really well.

The Black Crowes - Happiness Bastards (2024)

Country: USA
Style: Southern Rock
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 15 Mar 2024
Sites: Facebook | Instagram | Twitter | Wikipedia | YouTube

I remember the Black Crowes as quite the tour de force back in the day. Shake Your Money Maker was a peach of a debut album and The Southern Harmony and Musical Companion was a deep and mature follow up. Southern rock was undergoing a revival around that time, with Lynyrd Skynyrd resurgent and the Georgia Satellites setting the stage for the Black Crowes. I heard more of their albums in the nineties, but don't remember much about those, except the famous censorship of the cover art for Amorica.

I guess I thought they'd split up and moved on, which it turns out that they had, in 2002, after half a dozen albums. However, they got back together in 2005 for a decade and knocked out two more albums before giving up the ghost again, rather acrimoniously, it seems. However, now they are back for a third time, with this their first studio effort from their 2019 reformation and their first album of new material since Before the Frost... Until the Freeze no fewer than fifteen years ago.

They kick it off hard too, with Bedside Manners a stomp of a song driven by a thumping beat from someone I can't identify because none of the three credited members play drums. Of course, the core of the band remains brothers Chris and Rich Robinson, delivering lead vocals and lead guitar respectively, among other things. However, the third member is Sven Pipien on bass, so I'm having to guess at the rest of the performers here being the touring line-up. If that's the case, then that drummer would be Cully Symington, with Nico Bereciartua a second guitarist and Erik Deutsch on keyboards. If it isn't, then who knows? I don't.

What I do know is that this is very much the expected sort of sound for the Black Crowes. They had a hybrid style back in the day and it's still the same here, mixing up good old fashioned blues and gospel influenced rock 'n' roll with the country elements of southern rock. Bedside Manners isn't the only stomper, Rats and Clowns right after following suit. Wilted Rose is a country rock ballad with guest singer Lainey Wilson playing a strong female harmony to Chris Robinson's delightfully broken voice. Wanting and Waiting is right out of the Rolling Stones songbook. And so it goes.

The truest Black Crowes songs arrive later. While Dirty Cold Sun and a good chunk of Bleed It Dry have very deliberate vocals that are spat out like Bob Dylan might, they work from quintessential Crowes melodies and the vocal lines in the latter take us right back to the big hits from the debut album, just not as cleanly as some of those stripped down classics because the genre traditionally functions on grit rather than purity. Follow the Moon feels familiar too, not because any of it is at all borrowed but because it's so true to the band's core sound, especially when it hits the chorus.

The point, I guess, is that there's not much that's new here, just a fresh look at an existing sound by a freshly reformed band who have the urge to work together once more to see what comes out of it. Then again, I doubt anyone's picking up a Black Crowes album in 2024 and hoping to hear the band veer off in a new direction. They want to hear new songs but done in the old style and that's exactly what they get, except perhaps Flesh Wound, which ends up in an unlikely place, taking its bouncy pop punk-infused rock 'n' roll into what's almost a field recording of a religious assembly at school. I have no idea what the words are at that point.

And so I think how you enjoy this will depend on what you want to hear. To me, it sounds precisely like the Black Crowes released a new album and, if that's all you need to know, then you won't be disappointed. The most important thing is that it feels like they care about the band again which helps make these songs work. It's not so fresh that we might buy into them bursting into a studio with unbridled enthusiasm, but it's far from a cash grab. These are good songs played by folk who are enjoying playing them. However, if you know their back catalogue and want to see them move forward, whether into some sort of new territory or to evolve a little, you might be disappointed, at least a bit. But hey, probably not much, because you're already a fan and it sounds great.

Red Beard - Die Trying (2023)

Country: Canary Islands
Style: Southern Rock
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 3 Feb 2023
Sites: Facebook | Instagram | Official Website | YouTube

Coming in blind, there's no way anyone wouldn't guess that Red Beard aren't a band from deep in the American south. There are covers here of Lynyrd Skynyrd and the Marshall Tucker Band—and maybe more, but I didn't recognise anything else—and it's quintessential southern rock with loads of soul, country and some funk too. The album cover art doesn't hurt either, being quintessentially seventies deepsouth. Dig a little online and you'll quickly discover that this was recorded at FAME Recording Studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, "where it all began".

So, here's where I point out that Red Beard is a person before he's a band, though there are four anonymous musicians backing him up. He looks the part too but it's only if you watch the videos, a question mark will suddenly appear. That's because Red Beard is really Jaime Jiménez, who hails from the unlikely location for southern rock of Gran Canaria in the Canary Islands, which are Spanish but located off the west coast of Africa, where Morocco ends and disputed Western Sahara begins. They're autonomous and have their own flag, so I guess I'm identifying them that way.

I don't know why I didn't find him sooner, but this is the sixth Red Beard album and it's good stuff. I'm not familiar with the earlier releases, so I can't say if his sound has changed at all, but this has a sense of celebration hanging over much of it which may flavour that. There's certainly biography in the songs and the journey leads to that celebration, from Never Sounded So Good telling us that he heard his first Skynyrd song at thirteen and "it's like a lightning bolt shot down and hit me and I knew what I was gonna do from that point on" to Die Trying, which is all about the making of this album, travelling over to Muscle Shoals in what's clearly a musical pilgrimage.

These are the most real songs here, because they're so personal, and they feel a lot more natural than the opener, You Can't Stop Me, with a stop/start approach and some overtly funky beats and guitarwork. I wasn't convinced by that one but the album grows, through Never Sounded So Good, a cover of Skynyrd's Down South Jukin' and Die Trying to country songs like My Kind, which I could hear Willie Nelson covering, and the Marshall Tucker cover, Can't You See, with an imaginative Spanish take on a particularly iconic opening that returns for the other bookend.

Covering a song from Skynyrd's debut album is a ballsy step for a singer, because Ronnie van Zant delivered a genre-defining performance on it. This is a good cover but, if you listen to the original, Ronnie didn't so much sing it as allow it to leap out of his mouth without him even trying. He slurs eight words into one like he's singing through a Jack Daniels bottle. But damn, he sounds good. It seems fair to say that Red Beard sings it with more technical skill but he loses every comparison to make otherwise.

There are huge southern rock riffs here and blues guitar and plenty of soul, but what stood out for me was the organ. I have no idea who to praise here, except to point at that dude in the Die Trying video, but he's fantastic. This is secular music but there are songs here where I could see an entire Southern Baptist Church leaping to their feet and giving thanks to Jesus. He's there from moment one but there are so many great keyboard moments here, from tinkling ivories in Never Sounded So Good to the sumptuous organ intros to Die Trying and My Kind and the piano showboating that kicks off Getting Loco.

The other note I'd make here is that the closing pair of songs are easily the strongest rockers that the album has to offer, with the band finding a slightly heavier groove and jamming. There's more guitar here, both riffs and solos, with the solo in Getting Loco the most obvious on the album. There's a lot more from the backing vocalists on these too, especially the one on I Got What You Need that gets close to being a co-lead at points. These songs are Red Beard and his band getting emphatic and I kind of want an album of that now, even if my favourites here came earlier.

I'd call out Never Sounded So Good as my pick for standout song, partly because it's the closest to a Skynyrd song we haven't heard before, so much so that the backing vocals end up segueing into Sweet Home Alabama for a brief moment at the end. Mostly, though, it's because it's so joyous, a jaunty country feel with a real swing to it. The title track deserves to be, because of what it means to Red Beard, and it sounds great, but I'd probably go with My Kind next, even though it's a slower country song. Add the riot of Getting Loco to that mix and that's quite the variety on show. I need to jump backwards now and find those earlier Red Beard albums.

2 in the Chest - Heroes Blood (2022)

Country: USA
Style: Hard Rock
Rating: 6/10
Release Date: 7 Dec 2022
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Official Website | YouTube

I very deliberately cover new rock and metal from across the globe, seeking out talent in the most unexpected places, but here's a band from just up the road from me, in Glendale, Arizona, where a number of family members have lived over the years. They're underground local legends, because you won't ever mistake them for anyone else. Part of that is because of their sound, which is a mix of southern rock, hard rock, heavy metal and what Lemmy would simply call rock 'n' roll, told in an overtly theatrical way with songs that tell stories about legendary outlaws. However, a lot of it has to do with their look as well, which we could dismiss as mere gimmickry if the music didn't back up why we should pay attention.

This is a long third album for them at over an hour, but there are an admirable variety of styles on offer, all of which fit within a certain outlaw framework. The early highlight is Davy Crockett, even though it includes an overlong intro that steals a full minute and a half from the song. These folks do like playing up the theatricality during intros and they tend to sound great first time out, only to get old fast, because they're not easily skipped over.

Davy Crockett fits this bill, notably better than the two boring minutes of war ambience that open Clarence the Hammer McGregor and the album as a whole. Later intros for Old Mexico, Twin Iron Dupree and Apple Picken Killer do a little better, not annoying as quickly and surviving through an engaging character. A Little Off the Top could have done with, well, a little off the top, closing out the album with another couple of minutes of drama that suggest that 2 in the Chest really should go whole hog and record a musical concept album framed as an audio drama. As it stands, the only piece that truly integrates its intro with the song that follows is Evil Horde.

Fortunately, Davy Crockett survives its intro and rocks hard once it gets going, with a glorious riff and an urgent beat. This is emphatic hard rock in the style of Wolfsbane—and they really ought to cover Kathy Wilson—something echoed later on Misfitville and A Little Off the Top. I love 2 in the Chest in this mode, because they feel like the perfect band to blow roofs off small bars when they enter this mode, even before we factor in the image that can't be ignored. I've seen them live, so can back up how good they sound on stage, in an unlikely venue to boot.

Picture this. I saw them headline the Jerome Indie Film & Music Festival back in the days before its owners dived into scary rabbit holes and turned a worthy local event into a toxic political football. If memory serves, 2 in the Chest followed the RPM Orchestra who accompanied a silent movie with avant-garde electronica, always a good time, and then the award ceremony. I'd just discovered my old colleague Tim Wildenhain selling chocolate at the back, which underlined the artistic fusion of the event. Imagine that and then add in a bunch of hard rocking Wild West zombies to the mix, as that's precisely what 2 in the Chest look like. They dress up like what fellow locals Creepsville 666 might call "undead rebels of the night", albeit a century earlier than the imagery they intended, with heavy dusters and quality masks.

But enough of the image. I'm listening to an album and should focus on the music. While I certainly prefer their upbeat songs, they play slow and heavy well too. Total Annhilation adds in Motörhead to the sound, not that they were ever far away from it, especially with singer Reverend Blackmore Jackson McBride's voice able to turn up the Lemmy-style grit whenever he wants. I Know My Way Home has a southern rock feel to it, albeit without chicken picking guitarwork, but it's a slow and heavy southern rock. Evil Horde adds folk music to the mix and Seven Angels opens with harmonica and echoey power chords. That's clearly a song I should blast next time I'm MC'ing the steampunk fashion show at Old Tucson Studios, not that the prospects of that look good with their change of ownership. Local events aren't what they used to be.

I like 2 in the Chest a lot, but I have to say that the intros get a bit much on an album this long, the running time expanded by maybe fifteen minutes to cater to them. That suggests that you should see them live as the primary way to experience them and buy the albums as appropriate support. Some of the songs are filler too, which wasn't needed on an hour plus album. Tightening things up would have helped massively, so we could move from bouncy songs like the title track through the standouts like Davy Crockett to the more imaginative pieces like Evil Horde a little smoother. On repeat listens, that one joins the standouts, moving as it does from a crying young girl through a plaintive folk song, Jameson Jack Coburn's guitar lurking in the background ready to strike at the most polite moment.

But no, the theatricality remains intact and the filler is there on repeat listens, so I think this has to land a 6/10. But see them live, dammit. You won't regret it. And say hi to them afterwards. They may look scary in costume but they're good people.

The Tea Party - Blood Moon Rising (2021)

Country: Canada
Style: Hard Rock
Rating: 6/10
Release Date: 26 Nov 2021
Sites: Facebook | Instagram | Official Website | Twitter | Wikipedia | YouTube

It might seem provocative for a band to be called the Tea Party in the divisive political climate of today but this bunch are Canadian and they've been the Tea Party for, holy crap, over thirty years now, named for a social group of beat poets like William Burroughs and Jack Kerouac. This isn't really a new album for them but it kinda sorta is so I'm going to cover it anyway. It's a compilation for the European market of their Black River EP from 2019, the brand new Sunshower EP that was released in the US on the same day as this, two COVID era singles and a live track. So most of it's new and the rest is new-ish.

I definitely prefer the Black River material to what's on Sunshower but not exclusively. There are three hard rockers that stand out, for instance, all with tinges of alternative and southern rock. I prefer the two from Black River, namely the title track and especially Way Way Down, which takes the approach of the wildly underrated Raging Slab and adds some of the Middle Eastern textures that have led to the band being described as Moroccan roll. Hole in My Heart, from Sunshower, is pretty good too, with huge riffs that unfortunately occasionally seem borrowed from the Kinks.

The other real highlight from Black River is So Careless, which combines a groovy bass with some eastern melodies, then grows into alternative rock. It's a storytelling song that reminds me of a less idiosyncratic Cake. To highlight how varied this material is, Shelter is closer to Steely Dan and Blood Moon Rising (Wattsy's Song) is a strange amalgam of Pink Floyd with Leonard Cohen, which I really like, perhaps unsurprisingly given how much I like both those artists. And that leaves Out on the Tiles, which is a cover of a deep cut from Led Zeppelin III.

The highlight from Sunshower is its title track, though it took me a while to realise that. It calms the album down a lot from the two rockers that open up proceedings, though it really does build. It's more of a seventies rock song with an earlier psychedelic hippie mindset and some neat solos. Even with a Led Zeppelin cover on the album, the most overt Zep is the opening acoustic riff from Our Love, though the song moves more into a David Bowie cover of an obscure soul gem. I rather like The Beautiful, but it's extremely familiar—what pop song is that?—and the Tea Party can play this sort of thing in their sleep.

While the Out on the Tiles cover fits with the heavier originals here, especially Way Way Down, I'd call the bonus couple of covers that were released as singles last year a little jarring. They're not bad covers at all, but they're of songs by Joy Division and Morrissey and they're played very close to the original style of those artists rather than reinventing them into a Tea Party sound. They're therefore interesting but hardly essential. I can throw on the original of Isolation any time I want and, while I liked this cover, I can't imagine ever coming back to it.

And so this is a mixed bag, as such compilations often are. To be strictly accurate, the Black River EP was a compilation itself, as it brought two singles together with the Zep cover and three new songs, thus making this a compilation of a compilation with more recent material, but it does add up to everything that I think the Tea Party have done since their most recent album proper, 2014's The Ocean at the End. It's good to have it all in one place but I guarantee you'll be both repeating and skipping songs.

Blackberry Smoke - You Hear Georgia (2021)

Country: USA
Style: Southern Rock
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 28 May 2021
Sites: Facebook | Instagram | Official Website | Twitter | Wikipedia | YouTube

My local classic rock station had a southern rock weekend recently and I'm pretty confident that they didn't play a single track by Blackberry Smoke, probably because they didn't form until the year 2000. However, I'm also pretty confident that had they included, say, the title track from this seventh studio album of theirs, without identifying it, most listeners would have just assumed that it was a deep cut from Lynyrd Skynyrd that they hadn't heard before.

Sometimes, the only way we can tell that this is contemporary music is the fact that it's well produced with a fat deep end. You Hear Georgia is an old school number, with an old school riff and a simple old school message, and it's done really well. However, the following song, Hey Delilah, is also all of those things and it's even more patient and deceptively loose. It was written by Charlie Starr, which must be as southern rock a name as I've heard in years for a southern rock lead vocalist and guitarist. Yet, it's so timeless that I could swear it was an old song that's been covered by everyone, with or without the honky tonk piano.

While everything here counts as southern rock in one of its many forms, not everything fits the bill we tend to think of, that Skynyrd/Allman Brothers/Molly Hatchet multi-guitar workout. Ain't the Same is, ironically given the title, not quite the same as the opening three songs. This one's more mainstream, as smooth as an Eagles song, just with a van Zant style lead vocal. With a different voice, it would feel even more like a country rock song. And that's exactly what Lonesome for a Livin' is, one of the voices on it belonging to Jamey Johnson, solo country music artist. It's odd to hear this song on an album by a band because it feels acutely like a solo country singer song with the capable session players hidden backstage behind a curtain.

The other song with a guest appearance is All Rise Again, featuring Warren Haynes from Gov't Mule and the Allman Brothers Band, but that one takes the opposite approach, hardening up rather than softening up and adding what's almost a garage rock aesthetic to it. That these two songs with guests sit right at the heart of the album, ending the first side and starting the second, without feeling too jarring underlines just how versatile this band is. Even so, if you heard these next to each other on a radio show, you might believe the two songs to be by two different bands.

If my favourite song here isn't Hey Delilah, and I think it might be, then it's Old Enough to Know, which is a stripped down song so old school that it feels way older than a Skynyrd song from 1977. This could have been a Willie Nelson song from 1957 and I'm half convinced I've heard versions by Hot Tuna, Kris Kristofferson and Rod Stewart over the decades. It's probably as far from rock as this album gets, as a sort of chill outlaw country number, but it's a gem of a song and I adore it.

Another favourite is the closer, Old Scarecrow, which returns the band to the old school southern rock vibe. It's another song that could easily have been included within that radio station's southern rock weekend without anyone noticing that it was brand new. "I ain't ever gonna change my ways," it runs, and we can believe it. But, when it sounds like this, even without extended chicken scratch guitar workouts, it doesn't have to. It's timeless music and this is an excellent new addition to a genre that never has to rise again because it never slumped.

DeWolff - Wolffpack (2021)

Country: The Netherlands
Style: Psychedelic Southern Rock
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 5 Feb 2021
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Official Website | Twitter | YouTube

Latest on the list of bands I should have been listening to for years but hadn't heard of until now are this delightful Dutch outfit called DeWolff. They were formed in 2007 and, if I'm counting right, this is their eighth studio album, even if the last one was recorded on the road for the princely sum of €50. They won an Edison Award, the Dutch equivalent to the UK's Mercury Prize, as the Best Rock Band of 2019, so they're clearly well known over there.

So what do they sound like? Well, they're a kind of hybrid of Lynyrd Skynyrd and Stevie Wonder, with other notable seventies artists like Deep Purple and the Bee Gees popping in for close ups at points. As you'll imagine from that combination, it's wild enough that it's hard to actually define what they do, except to say that, when they're not finding a Black Crowes vibe, they sometimes appear to be the entire decade of the seventies rolled up into a single band containing only three people. Well, most of it at least. They're clearly not fans of Yes or Judas Priest but most of the rest is here.

They play funky psychedelia with a Hammond organ floating through it, hints of Marc Bolan jamming with Sly & The Family Stone. There's a fuzzy guitar but it's not overt enough for this to be counted as stoner rock. It's never far from southern rock but everything is built on melody above riffs, so think a song like Four Walls of Raiford over Free Bird. It's soul, it's funk, it's even disco on Half of Your Love—and that makes two albums in a row with a disco influence for me; when did that become cool again? There are way too many sounds here to cover in a paragraph of reasonable length.

In fact, there are way too many sounds here even in individual songs to cover them properly. Yes You Do, for instance, which opens up the album, begins like Vangelis, turns into fuzzy Skynyrd and ends up stomping on John Kongos ground. Treasure City Moonchild is a soulful Deep Purple number with scat singing Gillan but featuring Gary Rossington on guitar instead of Ritchie Blackmore. Lady J kicks off with a driving Golden Earring vibe but gradually becomes Skynyrd at Muscle Shoals. Roll Up the Rise is a playful swamp rock song like Dr. John covering Creedence.

If there's anything here newer than the seventies, it's the Black Crowes. R U My Saviour may start out like the Stones but it soon turns into the Crowes and actually stays there for a change, with its funky beat and a welcome brass section adding to its depth. I believe DeWolff are a trio, who have remained consistent since the very beginning, but there are a lot of instruments here. Guests include Ian Peres of Wolfmother and, though he isn't on my version, Luther Dickinson, formerly of the Black Crowes.

While I'm certainly better versed in some of these genres than others, most of this sounds really good to me. Everything is variety, but there's such a consistency in the overall feel so that nothing feels at all out of place, except perhaps Do Me, which Pablo van der Poel, singer and guitarist, may feel is the greatest song he's ever written but I would call easily the weakest of the ten on offer here. It played a lot like an elevator music cover of Band on the Run with all the good bits taken out.

That's the only song here that I'd skip on repeat listens, but everything else is a highlight, even if I'm leaning more towards Yes You Do, Lady J and R U My Saviour right now. Ask me tomorrow and I might plump for Treasure City Moonchild, Roll Up the Rise and Hope Train instead. These songs may well be ones that connect with us differently depending on our mood at the time, even though they're all the sort of upbeat antidote to COVID and whatever else is dragging us down today.

And so I've finally discovered DeWolff and I'm rather happy for that. I'm sure many of you will wonder where I've been, given that there are seven studio albums preceding this one, with wildly different art on their covers, and a few live albums as well. I can see a busy weekend exploring all this.

Black Stone Cherry - The Human Condition (2020)

Country: USA
Style: Hard Rock
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 30 Oct 2020
Sites: Facebook | Instagram | Official Website | Twitter | Wikipedia | YouTube

Album seven for Black Stone Cherry starts out really well with some stormers. Ringin' in My Head is a deceptively simple southern rock-inspired belter and it's a catchy one indeed. It was repeatin' in my head after only one listen and that means that it's a real earworm. Lead single Again is pretty stellar too but it's not quite as catchy and it's a little more alternative in nature. They're still a killer pair of openers though.

From there, the album kind of just keeps on going. These aren't long songs, so there are eleven more of them to come and only two of the thirteen make it past four minutes. In Love with the Pain doesn't quite make it to three. The good news is that none of them are bad. The bad news is that none of them are quite up to the standard of the openers. They each sound good as they play but they courteously move on to make way for the next and they don't leave anything of themselves behind as a reminder of what they were. They seem catchy but they're not earworms like Ringin' in My Head is. That one was still playing in my skull after track thirteen ended.

That means that they play best as album tracks rather than songs with lives beyond that format. And I like the collection of them that is The Human Condition. There's a lot of consistency over these songs, that patented Black Stone Cherry mix of hard rock, southern rock, and grungy alternative rock. Chris Robertson has the perfect voice for that mix, because he's not quite any of them individually but he's naturally all of them at once. If this band didn't exist, he could take a Chris Cornell type gig in an alt rock band without any trouble, but he's better with the harder edge that works so well here.

What's weird is that we eventually get to a cover version, which comes out of the blue with four songs left, and it isn't remotely what we expect. We could imagine something out any of those three worlds, a Deep Purple song, a Lynyrd Skynyrd song, a Soundgarden song. What we get is an ELO song, albeit a rare ELO song without strings, namely Don't Bring Me Down, and it's surprising enough that it has a purpose here, even if that purpose is just to surprise us. Black Stone Cherry do it well.

Unfortunately, that puts us in the mindset that we're in the double digit bonus tracks and so it's hard during the intro of another song not to see it as a cover of Metallica's Ride the Lightning. It's not, as it's an original song called The Devil in Your Eyes, but we've been surprised once. Why not again?

I've listened through the rest of the album a few times, avoiding the two strong openers that I'm sold on already, just to see if it'll eventually grab me and it hasn't yet. Everything still sounds good and it prompted a few notes, but none of it stayed with me, however much it felt like I enjoyed it. The Chain is starting to get there, with both a catchy chorus and a catchy riff. It's the heart of the album and I'm wondering if things would play any differently if I swapped it with Ringin' in My Head.

The softer songs are good, like If My Heart Had Wings, and the harder songs are even better. While all of them are driven by the timbre of and melodies in Robertson's vocals, the band are very tight while somehow seeming to be loose. That's a neat trick to master and they have it down. That works best on the songs where the riffs are urgent, like Live This Way. Black Stone Cherry do urgent really well and, judging by the "Yeah!" after that one finishes, they both know it and enjoy it.

Maybe I just need to leave The Human Condition be for a while and see if it starts to creep back out of my memory. If it doesn't, it's still a worthy album. If it does, it's a better one.

Nighthawker - From Wither to Bloom (2020)

Country: Netherlands
Style: Southern Rock
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 26 Jun 2020
Sites: Facebook | Official Website

I got caught by surprise by this second album by Dutch rockers Nighthawker and I've been listening to it a lot to figure out what's happening in their sound. It's clearly rooted in southern rock, but it's quieter and much more subdued than the usual Lynyrd Skynyrd or Molly Hatchet influences. They're surely there, but there's as much Crosby, Stills and Nash to lighten it all. There's easily as much late sixties here as seventies and on.

Instead, the guitars carry some unmistakeable fuzz with them. As bluesy as a song like Dishwasher Blues gets, with Mischa van Dalsen providing some tasty harmonica licks, there's always a connection to more modern stoner pop/rock and that's even more obvious on ongs like Night of the Hunter. The Moonlight Rider takes us back to the late sixties but it sports a psychedelic vibe not a hippie one. I could imagine this played by a band supporting the Doors at the Fillmore.

This versatility impresses me but it's really pretty straightforward. While we're used to bands going back to a point in time and playing everything in the style of that time, Nighthawker are a great example of a band who don't stop at that point in time but work forward from it in a direction that's a logical one for them, creating their music from that thin slice of influence going back through the decades. I just love bands who explore those slices.

The core of the band is four musicians, two male and two female, the latter not being relegated to the roles you might expect. I don't think any of them shine over any of their colleagues, but that's because they work so well as a cohesive band. While the songs here are created by four people, they sound like they're really created instead by a single unit with eight arms and the requisite other bodyparts to do the job right. That helps provide a sort of live feel, as if the various instruments can't be separated and can only be performed together.

There are guests too, with a saxophone on this track and congas on those two but it's the guest vocals that stand out most. Three of the band members are credited with vocals: guitarist Steven van der Vegt on male lead and drummer Kiki Beemer on female lead, with Brandon Spies adding backing vocals to his bass duties. Only guitarist Gwen Ummels doesn't sing, but she provided that gorgeous cover art, so I ain't complaining.

The two songs featuring guest vocals are The Rabbit Hole and Sundown. The former features the talents of singer/songwriter CelineShanice, which I believe is one word not two, and she does a fine job as a complement to van der Vegt. She's even better singing lead for Nighthawker on a cover of Led Zeppelin's What Is and What Should Never Be, which can be found on the band's website. It was the unique voice of Edith Spies-Wawrowska on the latter that really blew me away, though. Her main band is Violet's Tale, who are apparently an old time country outfit for whom she sings lead, and I simply must find out what they sound like, but she fits superbly here as well, even if her voice stands out enough to make it obvious that she's a guest.

It does feel odd talking about vocals here, because Nighthawker are a guitar band, just with subtle guitars for folk with such an overt love for southern rock. There's only one real chicken scratching guitar jam, for instance, at the end of Leaps of Faith, though Mountain Bridge does think about it. Other songs highlight just how varied the guitarwork is here, from Ummels and van der Vegt. They both play acoustic and electric, while the latter also adds a real flavour to the closer, That Train Left the Station, on slide.

This appears to be Nighthawker's debut album, following a couple of 2018 EPs called Escape the Hornet's Nest, named for sides of an LP rather than parts of a continued release. I'll have to track them down along with my expected side journey into what Violet's Tale are doing. And I'll add this band to my "want to see live but probably never well" list. I'd love to experience the feel of a live Nighthawker gig because I have a feeling it might be special.

Dätcha Mandala - Hara (2020)

Country: France
Style: Hard Rock
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 5 Jun 2020
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Official Website | Twitter

I first saw French band Dätcha Mandala described as stoner/desert rock, but that's not strictly true, even with the fuzz on Jérémy Saigne's lead guitar that makes the stoner side of that believable. It's not remotely based in a jam mindset, so I'm not buying desert rock at all. The band describe their sound simply as heavy blues and that feels fair to me, even before Missing Blues shows up to be completely overt, though other tags on their Bandcamp page ring true too, such as hard rock and psychedelic rock.

I'd add a few labels of my own too, as there's plenty of southern rock to be found in songs like Mother God, even before the slide guitar shows up, and a majority of the album plays in mildly psychedelic pop territory. The result is that, even though Stick It Out kicks off the album like a punchy stoner rock anthem, the next few songs continue to add influences until we realise just what the band's scope is.

Mother God brings in the blues, right down to a harmonica, but adds T. Rex pop sensibilities too. With that southern rock sound that extends to slide guitar, they sound like the Black Crowes covering seventies glam rock. Who You Are is heavy blues in the way that Status Quo used to be heavy blues in their heyday but the high pitched Nicolas Sauvey adds a Budgie feel as well. Missing Blues is pure blues, drenched in harmonica, kick drum and distorted vocals.

The band's sound palette is wrapped up with Morning Song, which sounds more like the Beatles with a side of Queen. Imagine if, after Freddy died, Brian and the boys had brought in Paul McCartney to take his place. Once this sound is in place, that aspect never really vanishes from the album. Sick Machine may have strong nods to electronica and even disco but it's the Beatles at heart with dashes of Queen everywhere. Moha is looser, with Indian instrumentation like hand drums and what sounds like a sitar but probably isn't.

Even Tit's, which returns to overt blues, stays in psychedelic pop territory and it takes really heavying back up to shift more to the Budgie vibe, like On the Road. That's done with emphasis on Pavot, which closes the album out with urgent and tortured punk attitude, and on Eht Bup, which is easily my favourite song here. It has a driving riff that's as close to stoner rock as anything since the opener, but the vocals remain ever light and playful, whether they soar like Burke Shelley or harmonise right out of the Beatles textbook. It's like the album in microcosm.

Dätcha Mandala are a trio, so they have fewer musicians than the Beatles or Queen had voices but, like Budgie, they're able to generate serious power as and when they need it and always seem like there are more people than there are making their music. Sauvey is a fine lead singer who shines particularly brightly in the second half of Tit's, but he also provides harmonica, bass and acoustic guitar. Saigne handles the electric guitar while JB Mallet sits behind the drumkit, not just keeping everything lively but shifting tempo on a dime when needed.

This is the band's second album, following 2017's Rokh, which I'll now seek out eagerly. While Eht Bup is easily my favourite song here, with Tit's and Who You Are not too far behind, pretty much all the rest aren't far off the pace, making this a highly consistent and enjoyable album. I'm intrigued by what its predecessor sounded like.

Ron Keel Band - South x South Dakota (2020)

Country: USA
Style: Southern Rock
Rating: 6/10
Release Date: 24 Apr 2020
Sites: Facebook | Instagram | Metal Archives | Official Website | Twitter | Wikipedia

Most people know the name of Ron Keel from the hard rock band Keel, who sold a couple of million albums during the eighties. Some might remember a little further back when his band Steeler featured a new in the US guitarist called Yngwie Malmsteen. He's actually explored a lot more territory than that. If an album carries the Ron Keel Band moniker, it's likely to be southern rock, and if the band are IronHorse, they're going to be country. He even sang in a Brooks & Dunn tribute band in Las Vegas.

This isn't just a southern rock album, it's a southern rock covers album and not of particularly surprising songs either, though fortunately not the most obvious. You're not going to hear an attempt at Freebird here, not Whipping Post and not Green Grass and High Tides, though frankly the best versions of those songs would be longer than this entire album. You will, however, hear a selection of songs another level down in fame, including five from number 16 to number 22 on Swampland's list of the the Top 25 Songs of the Southern Rock Era.

They're not bad versions, played a little closer to Keel's traditional hard rock than any of the original bands got. The first highlight is probably a late Lynyrd Skynyrd song, Red White & Blue, which they wrote after 9/11, so hardly a gimme from their old days. It runs over six minutes, which gives it time for Dave Cothern to play some wild southern guitar. It's a strong cover and Keel's voice fits it well. He does well on Don't Misunderstand Me, the Rossington Collins Band song, with the welcome aid of singer Jasmine Cain.

It has more trouble with songs that we know by heart. For instance, he's not bad on songs like Rockin' into the Night or Flirtin' with Disaster, songs so iconic that I wouldn't have to tell any southern rock fan that the originals were by 38 Special and Molly Hatchet. However, he doesn't bring anything to them that wasn't there already, so they're inherently lesser versions. Songs this iconic have to be completely reinvented the way that, say, Johnny Cash did to be worth the effort. These don't do that.

And that knowledge makes me wonder why he chose some of these songs. So many bands have covered the Allman Brothers Band's Ramblin' Man that a close take like this is pointless. Once COVID-19 is gone, you'll be able to waltz into any bar in the deepsouth on a Friday night and hear a local band playing it just as well. The same goes for Ghost Riders in the Sky, a 1948 song by Stan Jones that's covered by someone else every year, most obviously for Ron Keel by the Outlaws, and Mamas Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys, which was originally an Ed Bruce song before Waylon & Willie got hold of it.

And that means that this is a fun album, sung and played well, but an almost entirely disposable one. I'm not remotely going to suggest that you're going to get this quality out of any random cowboy-booted karaoke singer in a dive bar in Jacksonville but the overall effect is pretty much the same. This was clearly fun for Ron Keel but, to us, it's always going to be a set of songs that we've heard for years done almost but not quite like the originals and that's never the best thing to take away from a covers album.

I'm all for Ron Keel becoming the "Metal Cowboy" that he's calling himself nowadays. He does it well and his band are clearly very talented musicians, especially evident on rockers like Flirtin' with Disaster and the Atlanta Rhythm Section's Homesick. However, if he's going to do more than front a tribute band or play all his gigs at Alabama wedding receptions, he needs to write a heck of a lot of new songs and find a way to reinvent the old ones that he's covering.

Outlaws - Dixie Highway (2020)

Country: USA
Style: Southern Rock
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 28 Feb 2020
Sites: Facebook | Instagram | Official Website | Twitter | Wikipedia | YouTube

The opening track on this new Outlaws album has a deceptively routine title, Southern Rock Will Never Die, and we might be forgiven for taking it as just another catchphrase. The South Will Rise Again, right? Well, it's far deeper than that. It's a salute to so many lost legends of the genre that we can't fail to realise just how much time has passed. It namechecks multiples not only from Lynyrd Skynyrd, the Marshall Tucker Band, the Allman Brothers and the Charlie Daniels Band but also from the Outlaws, who were founded as far back as 1967. And you thought Wishbone Ash had been around for a long time!

With the founding members ether no longer with us or just not taking part in the band's activities nowadays, it's a couple of early members who have kept the Outlaws name alive into the 21st century, doing their part as it were to ensure that southern rock will never die.

Monte Yoho joined in 1969 as the band's second drummer, though his time with the band has included gaps. It would be misleading to point out that Henry Paul was just the seventh guitarist to join the band, given that there have generally been either three or four in place at any one time. They're known as the Florida Guitar Army for a reason. Anyway, he came onboard in 1972 and everyone else, with the exception of Steve Grisham, who had a brief stint in the band in the mid-eighties, are additions for the new millennium.

There's almost an hour of music here, which is welcome given that the band's hardly prolific nowadays. It's been eight years since the last Outlaws album and eighteen since the one before that, if we ignore an unreleased effort in 2007 and the 2000 release credited to Hughie Thomasson rather than the band.

Naturally it includes a whole heck of a lot of guitar workouts, because the primary reason they've kept a fanbase alive for over half century is those extended guitar jams that, in concert, can stretch on out to the end of the world. All eleven tracks include the sort of guitarwork fans are aching for, but to greater or lesser degrees because the songs break down roughly to an element of nostalgia, country rock songs, traditional southern rockers and, well, songs that are primarily there to just let loose with the guitars.

The nostalgia songs are primarily the bookends, Southern Rock Will Never Die and Macon Memories, with Over Night from Athens there too. The latter falls into the country rock category too, as does Heavenly Blues which reminds in some ways of Townes van Zandt. The good old southern rockers are Rattlesnake Road and Windy City's Blue with Dark Horse Run a more sedate companion right up until it ratchets up a notch towards the end. Every one of these songs is capable, though some are clearly better than others and none of them has any lyrical originality. The writing is good, don't get me wrong, but, if you've heard any southern rock album, you've heard lyrics like these.

That leaves the guitar workouts and they're glorious. The band teases us on the opening pair of songs, Southern Rock Will Never Die and Heavenly Blues, because both contain blissful guitar interplay which ends much quicker than we expect. Then there's the title track, which may be lyrically clichéd but dedicates much of its running time just allowing Paul, Grisham and new fish Dale Oliver to cut loose on guitar. Two songs on and Endless Ride plans the same approach, after a Bob Seger-esque warmup. Finally, there's Showdown, a three minute instrumental that strips this approach down to its essentials.

I remember a Kerrang! critic back in the late eighties being stunned at how the Allman Brothers absolutely blistered on stage, given that they ought to have become old fogeys even back then. That memory came to mind during track one here because the Outlaws are over half a century old but they're quite ready to blister. Sure, there's nothing here the sheer length of Green Grass and High Tides but Dixie Highway and Endless Ride could easily get there on the road. And suddenly, I want to experience a half hour live version of either of those songs.

This is mandatory for any Outlaws fan, highly recommended for anyone with a taste for southern rock and recommended for anyone new to the genre who may want to dip their toes into it. Some of this is a little safer than it ought to be, but, for the most part, the band only show their age through a level of experience that takes time to manifest. Just let the lyrics wash over you because they're just as weak as the state postcard cover art, so that you're able to focus on the magnificent guitar interplay. Nobody does that like the Outlaws.

Motorbooze - Motorbooze (2020)

Country: Argentina
Style: Southern Rock
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 1 Jan 2020
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | YouTube

Any rock/metal band name that starts with Motor, with or without an umlaut, is automatically going to stir up expectations of being a Motörhead tribute band but that doesn't help Motorbooze, who aren't remotely that. Sure, they clearly like Motörhead and there's a little Motörhead in their sound, but I wouldn't even call it their primary influence. Juan Della Ceca doesn't drum remotely like Philthy or Mikkey and Scorpion Shaw doesn't try to sound like Lemmy at all.

What they sound like is a southern rock band, which is rather appropriate as they hail from Buenos Aires in Argentina, which is rather further south than most southern rock bands! They have a heavy edge, so they're flirting with a southern metal tag constantly but I'd place them more on the rock side of an ever hard to define boundary between rock and metal, even though there's not much Allman Brothers or Lynyrd Skynyrd here. Think heavier than Black Stone Cherry but not so far down that scale to reach the likes of Exhorder.

While this, their debut album, starts out well enough, I actually think that it gets better as it goes along. Blood kicks things off nicely and it finds a nice groove, but it tries far too hard and there's so much staccato guitar that it lost me a few times. Obliterator plays in a similar vein but it kept me throughout because it stayed in the groove that it found. That it's also an aching groove helps too. It could easily be faster but it doesn't need to be and I appreciate the band fighting the urge.

As the album runs on, I found that those grooves get more engaging. From the relatively simple one midway through Roussian Roulette to the delightful and much deeper groove that pervades Blackmoon Shadows, the band comes across as particularly comfortable on these later songs, as if they were attempting to deliberately push the envelope on earlier, more overt songs and just settled down to what felt most comfortable to them later.

The boundary may be Motherfucking Song, which kind of does both. I love the more restrained solo midway through but I also love how punchy the song gets behind it. All the guitars, whether bass, lead or rhythm, are provided by a man named Sebastián Taux and he does a lot on this song, once the Al Pacino sample that opens it up gives way to the music.

As much as I enjoyed the work of his cohorts in Motorbooze too, I think Taux is what I'll take away most from this album. Shaw steals the limelight from the outset but Taux slowly but surely steals it away from him with a steady succession of solid riffs and elegant solos. I say slowly but surely because he doesn't really do anything flash at any point, so it takes a little while to realise just how good he is. By the time we get to the end of Mindset of Destruction, we realise it even as we acknowledge that it seems effortless for him. The final blitzkrieg is just a bonus.

I should also highlight Chaos Maker, which closes out the album. Everything here runs pretty consistently around four minutes, with Blackmoon Shadows a minute longer than anything else. Then there's Chaos Maker, which is a nine minute epic to wrap things up. And it does feel epic, as if the band took a look at all the things they did on this album and made extra sure to do them all double on this one last track. Somehow, it isn't overdone and the band sound all the better for being let loose like this. I liked it a great deal.

While the name is likely to continue to be misleading and I have no idea at all what the cover art is supposed to be telling us, this is a strong debut for Motorbooze and a solid recommendation for any who prefer their southern rock with a bit of crunch.

Sons of Liberty - Animism (2019)

Country: UK
Style: Southern Rock
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 25 Oct 2019
Sites: Facebook | Instagram | Official Website | Twitter | YouTube

Of all the southern rock albums I've reviewed this year, I believe that the Macon, GA-based Magnolia Moon are the only ones to actually come from where we might expect. The genre has found legs, it seems, so I'm finding bands in Greece and Germany and, here, Bristol, England, though some of the musicians are from south Wales. Now, I was born in the south of England and this isn't what I heard growing up, but it wouldn't have been a bad swap.

Sons of Liberty play a British hard rock take on American southern rock, so the guitars are more restrained and less prone to finger pickin' duels. The vocals arguably lead the way, though Rob Cooksley is an easy gateway to the guitars, which are stellar. The midsections of Start It Up and Old Soak Joe are just two highlights. The end result is surely southern rock, but I could imagine Sons of Liberty playing really well with British bikers. They could easily play alongside bands like Asomvel, Dumpy's Rusty Nuts or Status Quo.

While the listed influences are the expected brace of southern boogie bands, Sons of Liberty don't really sound like any of them. If I was forced to pick one now, I'd suggest that they're much lot closer to Molly Hatchet than the Allman Brothers, but the band who sprang to mind often was a surprising one: Los Bastardos Finlandeses, albeit because of the tone driven by the back end and the effortlessly powerful rough but melodic lead vocal. They'd be a good touring partner too.

This is the band's debut album, though they've been around since 2014. Last year saw a couple of EPs but this is a strong debut at a full length and it's stronger for an excellent production job. Cooksley has a big voice to begin with and he doesn't have to stretch at all; when he does, it sounds all the better. A pair of guitars sit alongside him and they're both busy and lively. The band was founded by the two guitarists, Fred Hale and Andy Muse, and they're the driving force behind the southern sound.

The back end, Steve Byrne on drums and Mark Thomas on bass, are solid and reliable. The former gets jaunty on a number of songs, even funky on Marvin Popcorn Sutton. I'd have liked to have heard the bass a little more because it's fantastic when it gets the spotlight, like halfway through Lead Don't Follow.

The album kicks in well with It's My Bad, a phrase which I have to realise isn't a common one back home in Blighty, though it's commonplace here in Phoenix. If you haven't heard it, it roughly acknowledges, "I screwed up. Sorry." There isn't anything for the Sons of Liberty to apologise for, though, because it serves as the first of eleven solid tracks. While I surely like some of them more than others, your favourites may not be mine and that's fine. None are lower quality songs failing to keep the side up. They all do the job.

Personally, I like Sons of Liberty better as a rocking band than a soulful one, but they do both well. A track like Into the Great Unknown shows both sides of that coin. It starts out slow and never really speeds up to tempos the band has already demonstrated, but it does build fantastically well. It has a full minute on anything else on the album and, while it's no Freebird, Whipping Post or Green Grass and High Tides, there are a couple of excellent solos: the first rocks and the second soars. It's a grower.

The southern style is there throughout, but it really comes out to shine on the first standout song, Snake Hips Slim. Marvin Popcorn Sutton has a great southern vibe, even with a funky beat and points where Cooksley finds a roar worthy of Angry Anderson. There are story songs too, like Old Soak Joe, that are southern in more than sound. The harmonica on Up Shit Creek, a phrase I think needs no explanation, adds to that too.

The more I listen to this, the better it gets. Initially, I liked them most as a sort of nine pound hammer: a force to be reckoned with when things need to be hit hard but not as useful when the need for subtlety takes over. That feel goes away after a couple of times through, because they're damn good at subtlety too. Over maybe three listens, Into the Great Unknown shifted from possibly my least favourite song to possibly the strongest highlight on the album.

This is really good stuff and I'm aware that they probably sound ten times as good on stage because there's an energy apparent here that you just can't capture on a studio album, even with a great production job. We have cowboys out here in Arizona; we're worthy of a tour too!

Autumn Tree - Autumn Tree (2019)

Country: Germany
Style: Southern Rock
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 11 Oct 2019
Sites: Facebook | Instagram | Official Website | YouTube

If I've been surprised by the continued rise of stoner rock in countries far away from its roots in California, I'm perhaps even more surprised about how southern rock is spreading across the globe. Autumn Tree aren't from Georgia or Florida; they're from Mannheim, Germany and I've noticed similar bands in nations like Russia, Greece and even Malaysia, places we should struggle to associate with Jack Daniels and the confederate flag.

Autumn Tree are very much a modern southern rock band, by which I mean that there's some Lynyrd Skynyrd and Creedence Clearwater Revival in their sound (check out the slide in the background during Lynda Q), but a lot less than more recent alternative rock bands like Black Stone Cherry, Alter Bridge or even Creed, though this outfit tend to be much heavier than Creed ever got. There's just a hint of country too, but completely from an anti-Nashville mindset. These aren't generic hunks in hats and they're never going to play the Grand Ole Opry.

They're modern and crunchy, with a prominent bass and a lively drummer, and their lead singer, Kai Lutz, clearly spent the nineties listening to grunge albums with the lights off. The quieter the band get, like some early parts of The Distance, the more it sounds like his voice is built of disaffection and near depression borrowed from singers like Chris Cornell. Sometimes, as on Promised Land, Lutz highlights that he listened to Metallica too, because that's a seriously James Hetfield chorus.

I do like Autumn Tree even more when they kick it up a notch and acknowledge that Metallica influence. Barman starts out slower but it ends up ratcheting up the speed and kicking serious ass. Kings of Rumble really threatens for a moment midway through but then slows back down again. And that's not unusual as the band often resist the urge to kick into high gear, staying more at a mid-pace and adding texture with effects pedals, as Velvet Revolver used to do.

I quite like that contrast of up music and down vocals and both do fall prey to the pull of the other on occasion without making it a habit. The question is always going to come down to how strong the hooks are, because these are all songs designed to be radio friendly without ever selling out. Almost all the eleven tracks are three or four minutes long, get down to business in no time flat and solidify their groove just as quickly.

I talk a lot offline about the need for content curators in rock and metal, people who can enable discovery for others in a world where everything's a click or two away but nobody really knows where to look. It's what I try to do at Apocalypse Later, explaining what obscure bands do and attempting with words to describe whether you're likely to be into them. With Autumn Tree, I just need to send you to YouTube, because any one song will tell you whether they're your sort of band or not.

If you dig it, whichever song that happens to be, you're going to dig all of this album and Autumn Tree are going to become favourites in your household. If, however, you don't, nothing else here is going to convert you. It's all about that tone. The vocals and guitars are either going to be exactly right for you or they're going to remind you why you hated the nineties, however much Skynyrd they sneak in. Let me know which.

Dendrites - Grow (2019)

Country: Greece
Style: Stoner Rock
Rating: 6/10
Release Date: 9 Jun 2019
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Tumblr | YouTube

My virtual travels around the world over the last couple of weeks netted me a couple of interesting submissions for review and I'm always happy when my inbox sparks up with quality new music from bands from all around the globe. First up are Dendrites, yet another interesting outfit from Greece who don't sound like any of the other interesting outfits from Greece I keep finding. They're from Volos on the Aegean, home in antiquity to the hero Jason, but this bunch are a heck of a lot more laid back.

They call what they do "groovy southern stoner rock" and, for once, that's a pretty accurate description. In keeping with the overtly American influences that I heard in Voidnaut, Skybinder and Soundtruck, Dendrites often sound as if they're closer to Athens, GA than Athens, Greece. Thanasis Tiblalexis has a fluency in English that many people in the deepsouth don't have and that's not just regular language but profanity too, which isn't throwaway.

It does highlight a certain attitude to kick off an album with a song named Get the Fuck and then follow up with Bullet Dodger about "your sensitive son of a bitch". Then again, their debut album from 2016 featured a track with a name as subtle as Whiskey Preachin' Motherfucker. They feel like the sort of band who play gigs on Tennessee stages that are protected by chicken wire and love it.

What's notable is that both Bullet Dodger and the next song, Throwing Rocks, are regular vocal based tracks until, well, they're not, each of them ending but then carrying on with a couple of minutes more jamming. Stoner rock has never been a single thing and Dendrites bring a lot of different influences from those worlds. There's as much Hell Yeah or Black Label Society here as there is Kyuss or Fu Manchu. There's also a grunge influence in the way the vocal lines are phrased, as if they know and like melody but don't ever want to be seen as radio friendly.

While the album rocks for a while, the first three tracks playing relatively consistently, Dendrites cover more ground than that. Dreamhouse Pt. 1 is far too deliberate for me, rather like alt country on a forced tempo, but I love the liquid guitar of Giorgos Alexiou. This is psychedelic territory and it's interesting instrumentally if not vocally. I'm Gonna Fly, which wraps up the album, is even more laid back, so far that it features a saxophone. It's a trip and it's gorgeous.

Mostly, though, Dendrites stay in that grungy stoner rock mould with a southern edge, nailed home by Tiblalexis's accent. That's not shit creek he's stuck up, it's shit crick. They do this sound well, but it gets a little samey in the second half of the album. Bullet Dodger is a much stronger single than Leave Me Behind; and a song like River, with its wild solos, ought to sound great deep into a live set but next to one of the band's catchier songs.

With the exception of I'm Gonna Fly, the best songs for me are in the first half, not just the rockers that start things out but also Dreamhouse Pt. 2, which builds off an old school riff to feel like a much dirtier Cathedral, less doomy and less cheesy but even more psychedelic and wild. As much as I didn't like Tiblalexis's vocals on Pt. 1, I think he makes up for it on Pt. 2 because he really cuts loose on this one to wail with style.

I wanted to like this a little more than I did, but it's good stuff and it's another really interesting sound to come out of Greece. The southern stoner thing works and fans of the genre will dig this, but the looser the band gets, the more interesting they get. I wonder if they jam more on stage.

Soundtruck - Voodoo (2019)

Country: Greece
Style: Southern Rock
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 31 Jul 2019
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Official Website | YouTube

If melodic metalcore band Skybinder play in a modern American style, that goes double for Soundtruck, also from Athens, who play southern rock. One of the highlights they raise across their web presence was opening an Athens show for Lynyrd Skynyrd in 2012. There's definitely some Skynyrd in their sound, but it's mostly more modern, even if the other names they list as influences don't get any newer than Blackfoot or Whitesnake, hardly fresh young things any of them.

They've been around for a while, even if they haven't recorded much, just a self titled album back in 2012, but there have been line up changes. If I'm reading things correctly, Billy Panagopoulos on guitar and Dimitris Lykakis on bass are the only ones to date back to that Skynyrd gig, having been with the band from the very start in 2008. George Kalaitzoglou, the drummer, and guitarist Greg Apostolopous joined in 2014, with vocalist Romanos Alexander the new fish, coming on board in 2017.

They feel very comfortable together, not just because they're tight but also because they're deceptively loose. Songs like Voodoo Woman are so loose that a band where musicians don't live in each other's heads would fall apart in no time. It's a real highlight here, not my favourite song but one to really appreciate nonetheless. Everyone gets their moment here, often all at once. During the solos in the middle, the guitarists play off each other, Lykakis patiently keeps time on bass and Kalaitzoglou keeps things very lively.

There's a heck of a lot here to enjoy, because Soundtruck never repeat the same song twice. Stay is a laid back blues rock song in the Blue Jean Blues style, but with smoother, more radio friendly vocals. Those vocals fit That Lady even better, as a hard rock song that would play very well indeed to a melodic rock fan. If That Lady plays it safe, The Calling has an edge to it, Lykakis's bass an ominous rumble, the guitars hinting at imminent menace and Alexander adding some danger to his voice.

Interestingly, those three songs come next to each other on the album, like a sort of progression. I like The Calling a lot, because Alexander's voice is so inherently friendly that it tends to take a little edge away from the band. This one, and the slower Wanted Dead or Alive-esque track that's The Train, restore some balance and they do it nicely. That last one's a western as much as it is southern.

With all that goodness in the second half of the album, I should point out that the first couple of tracks may be the best couple of tracks. Senorita is the catchiest and liveliest song here, played in a sort of Black Crowes meets Molly Hatchet style with an AC/DC midsection; it would be an obvious choice for a single. So would Heading Your Way, although it's a lot heavier and more reminiscent of the Cult. It's probably my favourite track here.

With only nine tracks on offer, that leaves The Wind is Blowing and Time to Change, the latter of which is easily the weakest song on the album, like a routine country song rocked up a little. It has a good solo but it's far too emphatically inoffensive to make me care. Would the album have been short at 37 minutes? It would have been a better album without it, albeit not enough to warrant an extra rating point. This is a strong 8/10 though to set August off running in style. Thank you, Greece, as always.

Black Oak Arkansas - Underdog Heroes (2019)

Country: USA
Style: Southern Rock
Rating: 6/10
Release Date: 24 May 2019
Sites: Facebook | Official Website | Twitter | Wikipedia

2019 continues to surprise us with albums from bands we never thought would release anything ever again. I've reviewed a lot of them here at Apocalypse Later. This month alone I've reviewed albums by bands as diverse as Saint Vitus, Banco del Mutuo Soccorso and Possessed, not to forget solid releases from recent returnees Whitesnake and Lucifer's Friend.

Well, if they aren't enough, here's the new album by Black Oak Arkansas, a band who haven't released a studio album under that name since 1976's 10 Yr Overnight Success, although lead vocalist Jim 'Dandy' Mangrum has generally kept the band going over the years under various names. One of these years I'll make it out to Joey Skidmore's Skid-o-Rama Garage Fest in Kansas City, MO, but I missed Black Oak Arkansas there last year.

Clearly, they're the latest to drink whatever it is in the water this year to prompt a strong look backwards at the past. I'm not sure what else might explain why two founding members, vocalist James 'Jim Dandy' Mangrum and guitarist, Rickie Lee Reynolds, rolled back the hands of time, but that's quite obviously what they were doing because, frankly, it's all over the lyrics like a rash.

The final track, Johnnie Won't Be Good, makes it most obvious, with lines like, "Today's rock 'n' roll ain't doin' what it should", but it's there in earlier tracks too. Channeling Spirits is almost a spoken word performance art piece that looks back at those names the world has music has lost over the years, from Etta James and Chuck Berry on to Dimebag Darrell and Randy Rhoads. It wraps with those members of Black Oak Arkansas who have passed.

"It is a sin to forget the unforgettable," it suggests, a line repeated on the next song verbatim, because it's Ruby's Heartbreaker and it's all about the last name spoken on the prior song, Ruby Starr, who often sang with the band back in the seventies. It's worth mentioning here that there's work on this album from another deceased band alumnus, Shawn Lane, who contributes guitar work to Do Unto Others, even though he died in 2003.

While the point of Channeling Spirits, is all wrapped up in the names that constitute most of the lyrics, there's a wailing guitar that never leaves the song and that becomes a common thread as the album runs on. I presume this is the work of David Flexer and frankly he's all over this album, so much so that he eventually becomes its focal point by sheer perserverance. Sometimes it's a searing lead and sometimes more introspective noodling but it makes me wonder if they just left him in the studio to solo for a couple of hours, then wrote songs around his material, because he keeps on going throughout the verses as well as the gaps between them.

It's been a few decades since I've heard Black Oak Arkansas, so I ought to go back and revisit their heyday. Even without that heritage at the back of my mind (and they charted with ten albums in the seventies), I dug this new album. They've generally been described as southern rock, but this is less a take on the Allman Brothers or Lynyrd Skynyrd than it is a heady gumbo of Tom Waits, Dr. John and Memphis soul, set to that wailing Flexer guitar.

At its best, this is glorious stuff, unlike anything else I'm hearing this year, because Black Oak Arkansas always went their own way and I'm happy to see that they're still doing that over four decades on. The highlights are dotted in and amongst the others, but I would highlight the emotional Don't Let It Show and the glorious and atmospheric Arkansas Medicine Man, two songs that open the two halves of the album.

At its worst, it's just redundant. There are no stinkers here but there are songs that don't add anything to the album, which would have been better had they been shifted to the flipsides of singles. There's over an hour of music here and it does flag at points, even if that guitar never gets old.

I'd have given this a 7/10 if it had been more consistent, or an 8/10 if it had more standouts of the quality of Arkansas Medicine Man, but I feel that I have to drop a point for inconsistency. If you're a fan already, I'm sure that you're going to pick this up anyway, but, if you aren't, you'll want to hit its high spots first to see if this is for you.

Magnolia Moon - Magnolia Moon (2019)

Country: USA
Style: Southern Rock
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 11 May 2019
Sites: Facebook | Instagram | Official Website

It seems that Magnolia Moon have been building quite the name for themselves in their home town of Macon, GA, where they're sponsored by two, count 'em, two breweries. How frickin' cool is that? They're a band of brothers, quite literally, with two Horton brothers, two Crowell brothers and Dwayne Boswell wrapping up the line up on keyboards, and these guys really rock.

I've tagged this as southern rock, so you're probably conjuring up a Lynyrd Skynyrd clone in your mind, but that's really not what these guys do. Sure, there's, inevitably, some Skynyrd in here, especially in the vocals of Zack Horton, but I'd suggest the Allman Brothers as a more overt influence, as I doubt anyone could miss from the two minute intro.

They play longer songs, not one of the six tracks proper here clocking in at under five and a half minutes. Mostly this is because, as sweet and pure as Horton's voice is, they're a jam band and they need space in between all the verses and choruses to explore how best to weave their instruments together to create something special. I should add that he's a major part of that too as one of the band's two guitarists.

I don't know how long they've been playing together, but they're very tight indeed and I could believe they all grew up with instruments in their hands preparing for this debut album. Everyone shines here but, even when they're in the spotlight, they shine as part of a band rather than as an overt star in its midst.

Surely they grew up listening to the classic rock legends of the seventies, because that's what shines through here. They cite the first three albums from Led Zeppelin and the first three from Black Sabbath as key influences, and there's certainly some of each here. The midsection of Daylight sees Horton add a lot of Robert Plant into his Ronnie van Zant and the rest of the band make similar adjustments.

It's actually hard to call out the rest for a couple of reasons. One is that Magnolia Moon never quite sound like anyone else, except for that intro, but incorporate a lot of other bands into their own sound. The other is that it is insanely easy to get lost in this music. I was taking notes on the Stevie Ray Vaughn nods in The High and the funk in Gypsy Woman and all of a sudden, the band were wrapping up Daylight and I realised that I'd spent the three intervening tracks in thrall, being carried along by these waves of sound.

Daylight is certainly the deepest track here, but it also has longer to play with, running almost eight and a half minutes. It's fair to say, however, that all these tracks feel deep. While there's nothing impenetrable here, I couldn't pick out a single. That's just not what Magnolia Moon do. They're not going to suddenly turn into the Georgia Satellites or the Black Crowes for the sake of commerciality, though they trawl some of the same territory and River Queen has strong hints of the latter. They're an album band.

And, of course, I'm sure they're a band who thrive most on the stage, where these five or six minute songs could become ten or fifteen minute jams. The five and a half minutes of Nothing Left honestly felt like fifteen but in a good way. It didn't drag, it just drew me in so far that I completely lost track of time. And that stood true on a second and a third listen, which is a heck of a subconscious compliment really. The same goes for Underwater in its final sections, because the band just rips.

I think this unashamed leap back into the seventies is fantastic stuff and Magnolia Moon are going to grow into a real force to be reckoned with. The big question is how underground they're going to remain, because this isn't the sort of thing that the radio is going to pick up on. I hope they break it somehow without turning commercial because they deserve to be heard.