Against
the Grain- Surrounded By Snakes CD review
This is modern classic rock- while
paying tribute to many old bands like Black Sabbath, Motorhead, the Dead Boys,
and early Metallica, they are also planted in a more modern sounding style of
rock and roll, like the anthems of a stoner who just had his first pot of
coffee for the day. The tempo is often
mid-tempo and occasionally slows down to a stoner rock sort of beat, and
sometimes picks up to a classic thrash pace.
The best way to think of it is like a Bell curve- most of the beats are
mid-tempo, with the occasional slow-down or speed-up. The guitars have a very heavy feel to them,
but more in a loud, headbanging sort of way, rather than a sludgy, powerful way
that one might envision when thinking of “heavy music”. Sounds are well-mixed, evenly balanced; it’s
very slick and professional. Lyrical
content is about traditional rock and roll kind of stuff- being in a band/on
the road, love of rock and roll (which has always puzzled me, but ATG is far
from the first or last band to have a song about the musical genre they are
playing), drinking, the end of life as we know it, the bores of daily life,
etc. Not provocative, but definitely
catchy and easy to remember, which is honestly more important in rock and
roll. This record reminds me of two
things: One, the kind of rock and roll I
grew up listening to as a kid and being enthralled with the enormity of it, and
two, the kind of up-tempo (at least comparatively so) music that people have
sloppy drunken awesome sex to. I can see
rocking out to this at a bar or at home.
A prime example of what contemporary, non-shitty rock and roll should
sound like.
-Aunty Social
