It's an innovation, of sorts. Koe Wetzel marries the ornery spirit of Red Dirt country with the minor-key dirge of post-grunge, a combination he smirkingly labels as a Sellout on his 2020 album. Wetzel can kick up a little old-fashioned dust -- appropriately, "Lubbock" skips along to a lively honky tonk beat -- but he's a new-fashioned rebel, cursing liberally and spelling phonetically, the kind of guy who gets choked up when he's singing about his "SideChick." Within the realm, such dour excess is relatively new, but it's not so much that Wetzel is innovative as it is that the goalposts have moved. Twenty years on from Staind -- a period of time that found its lead singer going country -- humorless heavy alt-rock now can be gobbled up by country outlaws, which is exactly what Koe Wetzel does with the songs "Kunty & Wistern," "Drug Problem," "Good Die Young," and "Drunk Driving."
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