Part of the beauty of punk rock is that you don't have to reinvent the wheel to get over with the stuff -- there are seemingly thousands of different variations to the fast/loud/snotty formula, and most of them will work just fine if you put enough legitimate vim and vigor behind them. Take
the Bloody Hollies -- obviously weaned on the same blues riffs and garage rock poses as a few hundred other bands crowding the hipster landscape, these guys aren't doing anything radically different than their peers, but let 'em plug in, turn up their amps, and hit fifth gear, and you'll notice that they just plain rock harder and sound more potent than most folks walking the same line. Wesley Doyle's guitar riffs are solid, meaty, and ladled with extra sauce, his vocals drip with swaggering anger without overplaying his hand, and bassist Phillip Freedenberg and drummer Michael Argento know how to bash the music into submission without bruising it. The band's songs talk women and anger as well as anyone else on the scene, and for their second full-length album, they had the good sense to roll into Ghetto Recorders in Detroit and let Jim Diamond put their fury on tape in an appropriate environment.
If Footmen Tire You... isn't going to change the way you look at punk rock, but
the Bloody Hollies will give you a half-hour's worth of top-quality guitar-fueled rant, and what's wrong with that? Not a thing, pal -- crank it up and enjoy. ~ Mark Deming