By Jonny Bakes
Sometimes there’s something that catches your eye amongst all the general noise that makes it stand out and make you take notice. This week, it was this description that really brought my attention to an album I hadn’t noticed… “Strap up, crack open a beer and enjoy this soundtrack to binge drinkin’, bar room brawls, and hangovers”. Having partaken in much binge drinking, had far more hangovers than I would like and witnessed my fair share of bar room brawls, I figured that I needed to see how well these guys really captured the essence of pure hedonism that they claim to have achieved.
Featuring former and present members of Aborted, Abigail Williams and System Divide, you could be forgiven for thinking that Bro Jovi would follow a similar extreme metal theme to these bands but you would be wrong. Instead you end up with a band whose celebration of all things partying rivals the kings of party thrash, Municipal Waste! With just one album under their belt to date, there hasn’t been much opportunity to experience Bro Jovi’s party stoner sound, but that’s about to change…
‘Songs to Crush Beer To Vol I: Slippery When Blacked’ was originally recorded and self-released by the band back in 2010, but has been re-released to celebrate that the band are entering the studio to record the long overdue follow up to this debut due to be released in 2020. If, like me, you missed this album on the first time round, let’s take a look at what they have to offer and work out how excited we should be for the upcoming release.
Overall this album sounds at bit like what you’d get if you took Lamb of God, loaded them up with Beers, gave them a cowbell, and let them loose to write songs about partying. Expect upbeat riffs, yelling, downtuned guitars, heavy baselines and a healthy dose of cowbell for good measure. This album could quite easily be the soundtrack to that little dive bar that you have fond memories of even though it was run down and filthy, and the beer was crap but only once you managed to find the bar through the haze of smoke. If that doesn’t give you a clear idea of what to expect, let’s look at some of the tracks.
‘Sanctuary Of The Beast’ is a great chuggy number with lashings of cowbell that is bound to get the room bouncing. The riff is nice and simple, but incredibly catchy and pairs up well with the powerful yells of vocalist Rob Montague. This certainly gets the album off to a good start after the extended intro ‘Greased.’
A personal favourite of mine is ‘Southern Fried Baby’ which has a fantastically slow chorus to contrast against the high tempo verses. As you can probably guess from the title, this song is a bit of a love song for the kind of women that hang out at the dive bars. The bass lines here are so fuzzy that they’ll give you a weird fuzzy feeling inside too!
‘Dirt, Blood, Sex and Speed’ is an absolutely relentless number that sums up those really crazy nights where you wake up somewhere completely unknown. There’s something a little bit QOTSA about this track, which I’m definitely on board with. Obviously, we’re talking significantly heavier though!
Possibly the fastest song on this album, however, is ‘The Heist.’ This song needs to come with a warning that you may find yourself speeding down the motorway while listening to it! It’s furiously toe-tapping thanks to some outstanding rhythms from Andrew Lenthe on bass and Thomas Heywood on drums.
I’m glad I picked this one up after all these years, as it is definitely a pretty great example of Stoner Metal! The real question is, will the band be able to carry on the momentum from this album after a ten year wait? If they can, then we are in for a pretty exciting 2020 release! We will have to wait and see…
- ‘Songs to Crush Beers To Vol I: Slippery When Blacked’ is out now. You can get your copy HERE.
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