It’s Friday night. The streets are awash with dickheads and slappers. You’ve had a couple of beers with your mates and fancy a couple more but you’d rather insert raw, chopped scotch bonnets into your eyeballs than hit [Generic Local Nightclub], so you end up at the pub. The one that has live bands on, and to be fair, the band that’s on are alright. They’ve just done a decent version of Zeppelin’s Rock n’Roll. This was a good choice. And then the singer utters those fateful words; “OK, we’re going to do one of our own songs next…” The groan from your fellow punters drowns out the name of the track, but it’s probably called We’ll Be Rollin’ or Backseat Boogie.
Soul In Exile (Suburban) is an entire album of those songs. It even has songs with those exact names. Which would be fine if they were AC/DC. But they’re not. The best thing about Soul In Exile is that it only lasts 33 minutes. The worst thing about Soul In Exile is pretty much everything that happens within those 33 minutes.
I don’t really even want to hear pub-rock when I’m in a pub, let alone hand over cash for an album of it. I was sick of shit pub-rock bands by the time I was 17, let alone (mumbles) years later. Tattered ‘n’ Torn (never an “and”), who used to play the Oliver Twist and had a singer that looked like Dog The Bounty Hunter, would shit on this.
“But Steve, it’s a tribute to the great rock bands and the southern rock movement…” Who cares!? Black Bottle Riot (who are as close to a fucking riot as a hat-knitting contest in an old people’s home) are safe, boring, ploddy, obvious and above all pointless. And they’re signed?! When many much-more deserving bands aren’t! You want to pay tribute and indulge in some Southern Rock? Do it properly, like Black Stone Cherry, don’t play fat old Dad music (and, for the record, Fat Old Dad are waaaaay better…).
2/10
Steve Tovey