By DJ Monk
Bad Boat are a band who have been teetering on the brink of the Northern Ireland metal scene for more than a decade and a half now, one minute threatening to explode like a neutron bomb, the next looking like they would equally spectacularly implode like a dying star, along the way delivering live shows that have shuffled between the apparently shambolic and the sheer sublime. So, perhaps it should come as no surprise that it has taken them seven long years to deliver us of some new recordings – and twice as long to produce their second full-length album.
One thing that has always characterized Bad Boat’s approach to how they do things is that have done so with no airs or graces, keeping things simple and basic. It’s an approach which has again been adopted on ‘Drown The Phoenix’, as they have eschewed all that fancy modern-day digital trickery, instead laying the album and its seven tracks on good old-fashioned 2” analogue tale via a Trident Series 80B console. Yes, this is done proper old-school, and that is a large part of the album’s appeal and beauty. It’s dirty and it’s greasy. It’s muddy and it’s grungy. It’s doom meets stoner meets heavy blues meets psychedelic proto-punk in a back alley knife fight turned into an historic jam session of epic proportions.
Big, chunky riffs lay down the groundwork for gnarly, twisting guitar harmonies which in turn are underpinned by massively delivered rhythms which work their magic through the sheer simplicity of their approach: there’s no funk-inspired bass runs, no needless extrapolation or over-exaggeration of the basic point; it’s just a big sound delivered in an honest and straightforward manner, allowing the guitars to seethe and broil around their concrete solidity. That’s not to say that they band don’t wander off at tangents, because they do: the epic ‘Blessed Insane’, for example, threatens to descend into a chaotic primordial soup of psychedelic noise, but, as is the Boat’s wont, somehow manages to hold everything together with some sort of inner connectivity which only the five musicians themselves seem to know how to control.
For those unfamiliar with Bad Boat and their distinctive sound, ‘Drown The Phoenix’ is the perfect introduction. Yes, there are times where is sounds shambolic, but it characterizes how close to the edge of sanity the band teeters, flirting with potential disaster but somehow managing to pull back from the edge at the very last second and steer a course into the harbour of security and synchronicity. Great stuff all ‘round and definitely worth the decade-long wait.
‘Drown The Phoenix’ is out now. You can get your copy HERE.
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