By: Jay Hampshire
Album Type: Full Length
Date Released: 17/02/2017
Label: 10 South Productions
“Spirit of Tradition” CD//DD track listing:
1). Road King
2). The Past Is Dead
3). Come Find Me
4). Monolith
5). One Night
6). Loaded Up
The Review:
We
don’t have to tell you that Vermilion Whiskey are
from South Louisiana – it’s plain enough from the booze-and-blues soaked
riffing of their latest release, ‘Spirit Of Tradition’. Six slices of
southern fried hard-rock, executed with the kind of honest bar-rock conviction
you’d expect to find from a self-confessed ‘working man’s band’.
‘Road
King’ grabs you by the collar of your denim jacket
and shoves your face right into the bargain CD bin of every hard-rock cliché
imaginable. Rote lyrics, overly dramatic guitar gymnastics and slightly
mumbling, crooning vocals let you know exactly what you’re in store for. ‘The
Past Is Dead’ kicks off promisingly enough with an urgent, muted guitar
riff, but that’s quickly nixed when all the tempo is bled out of it like a
stuck pig. It winds down into a template mid-tempo groover, before a stilted galloping
section and cringe worthy spoken-word vocals bloat things out so the track more
than overstays its’ welcome.
‘Come
Find Me’ features some decent throaty bass
rumbles and steadily building toms, but the records lacklustre production job
sees the low end buried under sloppy layers of slightly tinny guitars. A little
more punch on the bass and drums could have done the band a lot of dynamic
favours. The moody ‘Monolith’ builds slowly, with jangling guitars, lush cymbals
and decent layering, but seems to want to rush too quickly into upbeat, riffier
waters, rather than letting things breathe and develop.
‘One
Night’ stops and starts before winding up to a Black Stone Cherry-esque mid-tempo roll that contains the
lyrics, shit you not, “I drink whiskey and
I cry”. Closer ‘Loaded Up’ is movement heavy, with lots of ascending and
descending runs among the scratchy riffs, speeding up frantically before ending
hard, and being immediately forgotten.
If
you caught Vermilion Whiskey in their natural
surroundings, namely a slightly scuzzy, nameless bar somewhere in the Southern
USA, they’d provide an evening of worthy entertainment. Their musicianship is
solid, if derivative, and there’s a sense of honesty about it – no pretence or
high art here. Taken out of this context, however, they are template at best,
boring at worst, doing nothing to challenge neither the listener nor the
trappings of 70’s bluesy hard rock. According to ‘Road King’, “momma used to say turn that music down”. It
might not be ‘rock ‘n’ roll’, but we wish they’d listened to her.
“Spirit of Tradition”
is available here
