Dead Fly Buchowski – 'Land of the Rough' (Beggars Banquet)
3/5
By: Thomas Hannan
'Land of the Rough' can be with you for a while and make little to no impact before, after a hardly brief period of investigation, it becomes apparent that this is really a rather strong rock record. The melodies are winning, the riffs suitably gritty and sizeable, the delivery highly impassioned. Two questions then - firstly, why does such a rewarding process take such an effort? And what's more, what is it that you miss out on in the first place, but revel in after more stringent exploration?
Well, at first, all you really hear are the limitations. The thick, unrelenting smog, the incessant and initially it appears over used battering rhythms, the unrelenting dedication to stick with a collection of relatively simple riffs and just hammer them out at a pace heads can bang to. It's just a rock record. It doesn't do anything more, and nor does it promise to, or even seem like it wants to. And the few unredeemable moments of it, even after the enlightenment, still reside in this uninspiring territory - the closing rambling drone of 'Sun Song' seemingly only being there as someone bafflingly felt the needed to include a nine and a half minute epic which really doesn't go anywhere, 'The Way She Goes' even sounding a little bored with itself.
Apart from such few bothersome moments however, its preliminary apparent flaws become 'Land of the Rough's saving graces. When all you anticipate is a rock record, you end up getting a consistently good, and at times superb one. Those corking tunes are present in the excellent opener and homage to all things both Black and Sabbath 'Russian Doll' and fine debut stomp 'Blackout', melodies so driving you're at times convinced the drums are somehow playing exactly the same notes as the guitars pop up on a pummelling 'Been Down Before' and 'Pandemonium', every riff that ever raises its head (and there are thousands) is bigger than your house. But perhaps Dead Fly Buchowski's greatest asset is the far from dulcet, gritty and heated bellowing of Roddy Campbell. It's his infinitely listenable voice that gives 'Land of the Rough' such a feeling of conviction, that means you believe them to mean it even when they're not relying on sheer brute force to make their point, the almost tender 'Anyway' or oddly uneasy 'Blacker Than Blue', for example.
Alas, at present they remain doing just the one thing. Enjoying it and pulling it off they may be, but there's nothing here to make it a classic, nothing that will endear it to any moments beyond those that call for a '1-2-3-4!' and a volume turned up to 'MAX'. Don't allow early glimpses at its briefly fiddlier, more forward thinking moments to fool you - it remains just a rock record. Expect nothing more then, as after all, expectations are constantly troublesome things. Perhaps we should all give up looking ahead to anything, and just get what we're given. Commonly, it can be more than we deserve.
Your Feedback
Login to post your comment