Tombstone Highway - Ruralizer (2013)

I'm going to make an assumption that most readers of my reviews are at least partial cinephiles, and might have come across a 1968 spaghetti Western flick directed by Sergio Leone and titled Once Upon a Time in the West (with Charles Bronson and Henry Fonda). It's one of my all time favorite films, due in no small part to the stunning photography, both the landscapes and the gritty closeups of the actors, no dirt and sweat spared in its broiling, sun-caked intensity. Here we had an acclaimed Italian director, who probably had no right in creating an iconic glimpse into the idealized American Wild West, that proved unforgettable. When I caught my first glimpse of Tombstone Highway's logo, and skimmed the band's information, I had to admit my curiosity was piqued. An Italian band, performing a mix of stoner and Southern doom?! I could taste the blood, smell the gun smoke, and hear the harmonicas on the wind...

Unfortunately, the Italians' debut did not turn out quite as fascinating as I presumed, but not for lack of trying. For one, this is more or less a record full of garden variety Sabbath-style riffing sequences sauced in a more contemporary, massive guitar tone. Painfully few such stoner/doom oriented acts are capable of evolving this influence into new and interesting ways, so derivation has long proven a monkey on the niche's back. It also doesn't help that the tone, the guitar squeals and the writing in general reminded quite a lot of Zakk Wylde's Black Label Society, a group I consider to be one of the nadirs of American heavy music. Front man and multi-instrumentalist H.M. Outlaw is not incompetent at these sorts of monstrous, blues heavy grooves and making them stick, but the fact is they all feel too damn familiar. For instance the chugging bottom end riff that fuels "Acid Overlord" sounds a lot like Cathedral's "Ride", and the opening sequence of "Graveyard Blues" sounds like an attempt to chop up Kiss's "War Machine" into something sludgier and heavier. The drums do a decent job of complementing the grooves with steady rock beats, and the bass guitar creates a springy support for the axe work, but the rhythm guitar riffs are just too similar to what we've heard in decades of Sabbath, Trouble, Pentagram, Down, and are too rarely inventive or fresh.

Vocally, the band is a little more interesting, since Outlaw has an acidic melody to his timbre that inflates the emotional impact of the record. Almost like a mix of Blackie Lawless, Gene Simmons and Wylde's voice from BLS, but it manages to avoid the pitfall of sounding too much like Ozzy Osbourne (which only a few bands can really pull off). It gets a little old after a few tracks, but the guy clearly has some conviction. The richness of the guitar mix and the syllabic meter of the vocals actually reminded me quite a lot of a few Swedish groups like Terra Firma and Hellfueled, though nowhere near as uptempo and hooky as the latter. The Western theme reminded me of another European cowboy posse, Germany's Desperadoz, but where they throw it straight into your face with all manner of cheesy cover tunes and cliches, coming off like a hybrid of Alice in Chains and Clint of Eastwood, Ruralizer is possessed of a more curvaceous, Southern slang, and some clear psychedelic/doom influences to the lyrics and subject material.

No, apart from some clever banjo plucking in a few spots, most notably the opener "Old Blood" where it is well entwined to the rhythm guitar; or some of the song titles, Ruralizer doesn't feel too specifically as if it were a Western tribute, but more the American South as a whole. This is reinforced with the inclusion of the Mountain cover "Mississippi Queen", which is simply too safe and expected a cover to make much of a difference. I might have preferred some Molly Hatchet or Lynyrd Skynard, but this one has simply been done to death already, and even though Tombstone Highway make it their own well enough, it's just not a highlight for me, among a batch of originals that...well...aren't highlights in of themselves. As hard as I'm coming across, I will say I do like the 'idea' behind this band, just not the execution of these particular songs. The notion of an Italian hybrid of Black Sabbath and Raging Slab (an obscure US group who put out a killer debut of metal-injected Skynyrd) is an interesting one, so I hope as the duo evolves they'll pen up a more convincing riff-set and start to branch out into their own territory. For now, this is most likely to appeal to diehards of BLS, Down or perhaps fans of vivacious burning doom-blues like Trouble's eponymous 1990 record, or its follow-up Manic Frustration. But I wasn't feeling it, and thus I'll have to hang my spurs up elsewhere.

Verdict: Indifference [5/10]

http://www.facebook.com/Tombstone.Highway

Hellyeah - Stampede (2010)

The fact that a second Hellyeah album has manifested itself is proof that either there is a divine entity who fucking hates us all, that we are merely the receptacles of a several-tiered, torturous joke at the behest of one Vinnie Paul, or that major label record executives in the United States are batshit bonkers. Okay, we know that the last one is true regardless, but the jury is out on the others. But let's give Hellyeah some credit this time: they at least shelled out a few dollars to some hack for a stampede of bulls on the cover, instead of another boorish photo session that the members could stroke themselves to as they must, staring in the mirror each evening before a gig in front of whatever LCD audience actually gives them the time of day.

I'm going to give Hellyeah a little more credit than even this, because while Stampede sucks at the donkey trough almost as much as its predecessor, its clearly better in almost every means imaginable. The production is just as clean and professional as one would expect from this seasoned crew inhabiting the nu-metal pantheon, and Chad's vocals are a little better, as he seems to be channeling Bay Area thrash gods James Hetfield and Chuck Billy on half of the tracks. The lyrics, while still dumb as a stump, do more to convey that feeling of God fearing, fire breathing Texas motherfucker aggression that any of us with a taste for fun would truly expect from a band of this sort. For example:

Ya see I sold my soul at the cross in the road,
Somewhere down in Texas where the devil had spoke,
Said boy you wanna be somebody sign on the line,
I said I gotta raise some hell so I ain't got the time

Fair enough, my good men, fair enough. I can get behind this. It spits fumes. It spits gasoline. It's not tactful, and it's not poetic, but it's honest and makes me want to fight someone, somewhere, at some point in time, and that is exactly what I want out of a band with Vinnie Paul behind the sticks and a herd of bulls trampling the dust on the cover. You can draw a little blood to this first song, "Cowboy Way", which seems like a Pantera dingleberry hanging on from the Great Southern Trendkill days, with the mildly more thrashin' vocal delivery. Sure, the tuning of the guitars and relative, plugging simplicity of the riff patterns feel rudimentary at best, but I didn't immediately question if the world was one big Candid Camera episode starring myself as I did listening through the previous album.

Instead of surging to some rock hook track like they did on the debut, the band continues to barrel forth through a hostile number "The Debt That All Men Pay". They save the rock track for third, "Hell of a Time", but at least it seems to have some more attitude. "Stampede" reminds me a lot of the song "Hellyeah" from the s/t...perhaps the band has some twisted plan to record one shitty thrash-gone-nugroove title track each time they hit the studio. Needless to say, it sucks, and the rest of the album follows suit, with the "Cemetery Gates" meets "Fade to Black" bullshit of "Better Man", horrible vocal/riff exchange of "It's On!", the chugging lowdown grime of "Pole Rider" and dumb wigga grooves saturating "Alive and Well" until the rock chorus erupts.

Still a 'hell no' for Hellyeah here, and Stampede certainly doesn't elevate the band beyond the suck territories, but its undoubtedly better crafted than the first record out. For a few moments, at least, you can be transported to a hard ass world where your guns, tobacco and attitude are all that separate you from the precipice of death. However, I still feel like this band should stop 'horsing' around (haw haw) and KICK some ASS! Write a concept album about some famous cowboy or something, and enhance both the musical skill and ambition. Clearly these guys can play what they need to play, and judging by the vocal improvement alone, Chad is up to the task of something far better than what he's written here or in the awful Mudvayne. So make it happen already, and kick our asses back into the 19th century.

Verdict: Epic Fail [1.75/10] (another day in the trenches)

http://www.hellyeahband.com/

Hellyeah - Hellyeah (2007)

Despite what most bigoted anti-rural Americans would tell you, we could always use a few more heavy Southern rock bands, especially if they're willing to take the rustic, bumpkin grooves of a Molly Hatchet or Lynyrd Skynyrd, and the more recent, unsung Agony Column and Raging Slab and run with this cross-section of styles into a more extreme territory. Having drummer Vinnie Paul of Pantera adopt such a formula for his post-Damageplan project is not such a stretch; this man has grown up among such influences and both of his alma maters were certainly exhibited traits of nasty Texas grooves and shotgun rodeo attitude.

But the problem with Hellyeah starts long before the baneful first notes of the namesake track even erupt, and you need look no further than the absolutely shoddy cover image, which has 'poseurs' written all over it, a bunch of men in cowboy hats prominently displaying tattoos, crossed 'tough guy' arms or Vinnie's 'Here's lookin' at you, slickster rock pose', with the longhairs tucked conveniently behind for some metallic cred. With the undeniable notoriety and success Pantera, and the shitty bands Damageplan and Mudvayne (whose members represent 80% of this lineup, joined by guitarist Tom Maxwell of Nothingface), wouldn't you think a little more could be scrounged up than a flaming pose shot affixed to a horrendous Photoshop logo? This album was issued through Epic/Sony records, so are you fucking kidding? A little effort goes a long way, and the image fronting this debut shows none. It does not bode well for the musical content...

...and once you've peeled away every urge to simply toss this in the dustbin then and there, summoning up the old wives' morality play on never judging a book by its cover, you are greeted with a moderately bouncy thrash riff and Chad Gray's Southern charged hybrid of Rob Zombie, Phil Anselmo and David of Disturbed. I won't deny the man has some power in his pipes, but he's so often used it for the wrong reasons, and this is just the latest, an awful smattering of nu-metal aggression that wouldn't be sufficient for the backstage at an OzzFest. The remainder of the band also phones in the material, creating generic verse-chorus songs out of horrendously juvenile lyrics that wouldn't fly if the band members were 12. I mean, even in this very first song, the thrash rhythm disappears within a moment, ceded to an atrocious bounce-core groove chorus which was only mildly entertaining when Biohazard did it numerous times in the early 90s. As for the lyrics...

If ya don't give a shit ya getcha hellyeah
Throwin' fists in the pit ya getcha hellyeah
Think you're fuckin' with this well hell no.
Balls, volume, strength getcha come on
Drinking beer smoking weed ya getcha hellyeah
Gotta bruised attitude ya getcha hellyeah,
Think you're fuckin' with this well hell no
Balls, volume, strength getcha come on

Seriously, is there a human being in this country, or this world dumb enough to actually think that these are good or inspiring lyrics? FUCK OFF.

Beyond this abortion, the band immediately lurches into a big melodic radio rocker you'd expect out of Puddle of Mudd or any other failure to launch at Alice in Chain's rectum. More melodic chords, a typical ascending pattern of notes and no lights on at home. Fuck, if I wanted to listen to this shit I'd just stick to Corrosion of Conformity's midlife crisis. The rest of the album merely bounces between these poles. The aggressive content includes the rappy stupidity of "Matter of Time", the more thrash-heavy "Waging War", and "Rotten to the Core". Wannabe Alice in Chains songs include "Star" and "Nausea", the latter being the one track on this album that is even mildly catchy, and even then only for a few seconds. I'd love to point out some other strengths here, but aside from the production, to which plenty of resources were poured into, there is just nothing one can say, for any of this pedestrian mental disability manifesto.

So in short, you're not getting a kickass Southern groove metal record here. You might have thought you were signing up for such a prospect, what with the cowboy hats, the Christawful band moniker and raucous attitudes. What Hellyeah is, is just a celebrity sausagefest of failure. Failure to write good music, failure as proof of a band concept, failure to even lick the boots of the band's other project (most of which are utter poo poo themselves). How about you tough guys harden the fuck up and write something worthwhile? Take all of this largely undeserved celebrity you have ridden into this major label deal, and write us an album that makes us want to drink rattlesnake venom, plant boots in city liberal hipster asses and shatter whiskey bottles at 100 yards with rifles? "Alcohaulin' Ass"? Clearly you need to lay off the sauce and haul some ass in other areas, like writing music that might validate the waste of space you are.

Verdict: Epic Fail [.25/10] (a little bit thirsty, a little bit used)

http://www.hellyeahband.com/