Cover artwork by Przemysław Szukaj. |
The
second time I listened to opening cut, "The King Is Back", the drum
solo that kicks the album off actually put a smile on my face that wouldn't be
wiped off until well into the song, at which point it was down to the more
serious business of nodding along / outright headbanging. I should
mention that all this shamelessness took place on a public street, at a bus
stop and on the bus. Naked Brown strips
you of all shame and self-consciousness.
Taking an
overview of the album you may notice the uniformity of the song lengths, the
greatest variation between song lengths appears with the final two tracks,
“Storm is Comin’” at 4:26 and “Just Like Luke (Skywalker)” at 5:16. Those are the shortest and longest cuts on
the album. This may sounds like a
pointless detail but it goes great distances towards describing the band’s
approach to songwriting. Naked Brown
aren’t going to bowl you over with inventive song structures or outside-the-box
thinking, each song is made up of the classic verse-chorus-solo rotation. Still, some believe that the highest artistic
achievements are made within limiting confines.
So, that being the case, the success of each song must fall solely on
the strength of the riffs, melodies and drum syncopation.
Like
Motorhead, Naked Brown isn’t for everyone, this is heavy rock music for
headbangers, pure and simple. In so many
ways, a band such as this (and they don’t come around all too often) are the
direct descendants of Chuck Berry in that this is hyper-making music on the
cutting edge of contemporary heaviness.
With all that said, the difference between Naked Brown and Chuck Berry
or Motorhead is the level of variation between songs within those restricting
confines of consistent individual identity and similar structures. Each song is a distinctive and unique
sibling, as opposed to being a genetic twin of the one that came before
it. The one overriding factor of each
song is the mood. This is rarely more
evident than between the blues-bar anthem “Made To Kill” and it’s sold-out
stadium heavy metal follow-up “T.O.D. the Barbarian”. That mood or thing that ties it all together
is the consistent instrumental tone. Again,
the band works with a limited palette of tones and structures and paints heavy
rock masterpieces with a surprising range of styles.
But just
in case I didn’t make myself clear, this is the best stoner rock record I’ve
heard in a long time. Naked Brown errs
on the energetic side, much of that has to do with the excellent drumming of Tomasz
Wyrąbkiewicz who keeps things moving at a psychobilly pace and pulls everything
out of the bag from double kick to cowbell.
Don’t miss this one, my words fall far short of what this album is all
about, it simply kicks ass.
Highlights include: "The King Is Back" and "T.O.D. The Barbarian"
Rating: 4.5/5
Total Run Time: 33:49
Genre: Stoner Rock, Hard Rock, Metal
Reminds me of: Isaak, Motorhead, Palm Desert
Release Date: November 23, 2013
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