Barn Burner - Bangers (3.5/5)

01. Holy Smokes 03:42 02. Fast Women 03:21 03. The Long Arm of the Law 02:26 04. Beer Today, Bong Tomorrow 05:03 05. Runnin’ Reds 02:46 06. Medium Rare 02:58 07. Brohemoth 06:28 08. Half Past Haggard 03:10 09. Wizard Island 05:09 10. Tremors 03:54 11. Old Habits 01:43

Barn Burner hail from Montreal, Canada, and the first hint about their music comes from the fact they refer to it as “Bongtreal”. Way to peg yourselves in the stoner metal bracket, guys. The hairy four-piece formed in 2007 and were gigging up a storm all across North America until they caught the attention of Metal Blade records, who signed them up for the release of their debut album ‘Bangers’ in 2009. Well, international re-release, technically, but let’s not get bogged down in semantics…that certainly wouldn’t be the Barn Burner spirit.

Yup, Barn Burner are definitely stoner metal, as is kind of underlined by song titles like “Holy Smoke” and “Beer Today, Bong Tomorrow”, but there’s something a little bit NWOBHM about their high-speed dual-guitar assault. It’s kind of like Fu Manchu meets Iron Maiden, which (for me, at least) is about as tantalising a mix as you could come up with.

The album kicks off with “Holy Smokes”, which comes out of the blocks like Usain Bolt on crack. There are no pretensions here, no swanky intro or a pause for an intake of breath, Barn Burner just take a run at you with a guitar in one hand, a beer in the other and a joint hanging out of their mouth. The familiar stoner fuzz is combined with a breakneck guitar lead and a catchy chorus - a formula which is repeated on many of the album’s tracks. A suitable comparison might be ’Daredevil’ era Fu Manchu, way back in the early to mid nineties, when they used to just shred for a lead part. “Fast Women” is a similar number but with a sort of redneck feel - in the mental image for this song, the band are hanging out in a pickup truck rather than a van. They’re still pretty high, though, and driving far too fast.

“Beer Today, Bong Tomorrow” belies its comedy title and marks the first true change of pace in the album; it’s more of a mid-tempo stomping number than a pedal-to-the-metal shred-fest. On that topic, this is similar music to stoner classics like Kyuss and Fu Manchu in that it’s excellent to drive around at frankly irresponsible speeds to. Presumably this is because the band themselves have to, as they maintain a near-constant touring schedule comparable even to that of the Fu themselves, the perennial road warriors. Songs like “Half Past Haggard” and “Runnin‘ Reds” in particular show up the band’s stoner influences - the former combines a Queens of the Stone Age riff with a riotous Fu Manchu chorus and guitar noodling.

As I noted with “Beer Today…” though, this isn’t all foot-to-the-floor, balls-to-the-wall madness; “Brohemoth” lives up to its name, while doing something a bit different; a sprawling, epic, almost progressive monster of a song. It weaves its way through a fuzz-tinted wasteland of mastodonic riffs and wailing guitar leads, complete with a quiet vocal interlude before another frantic guitar hook leads into a final climactic chorus. “Wizard Island” toys with a quirky verse riff before juxtaposing it utterly with a slow, melodic chorus made up of big major chords. There’s some heavy script-flipping halfway through to boot, with a noodling breakdown and a strange, echoing vocal refrain - very old-school stoner rock, like something off an early Kyuss album.

Don’t go expecting any major variations on this album, though - I guess nothing I’ve said so far would lead you to that in any case. The image I drew of the band taking a run at you, beer and joint in hand? That’s all you get for the full 40 minutes these 11 tracks span. It’s a bit like your barmy mate who’s great fun to have a pint with, but that you wouldn’t want to ever meet your parents and in all honesty probably isn‘t getting invited to the wedding. He’d just get up on the table with his willy out, or attempt to eat the entire cake. No, there’s little subtlety to be found here, and indeed a cynic could dismiss Barn Burner as a bit of a one-trick pony - but to be fair, it’s a pretty great trick. Lesser ponies have made careers out of less impressive tricks, and this is after all only the band’s first album. So let’s just let them be, and enjoy the ride, eh? Oh, one other criticism, I guess…their frontman is called Kevin Keegan. Oh dear.

The production is everything you would expect from the album I’ve been describing so far - raw, dirty, and drenched in fuzz. Sure, maybe it could be a little more polished, but frankly, overproduction is precisely where Fu Manchu went wrong; stoner metal doesn’t take to being polished that well, and is often at its best when it’s just being itself. This is music that reflects the bands who play it; dishevelled and hairy, half crazed from too many nights spent smoking pot, drinking cheap gas station beer and sleeping in a van. Sometimes it just sounds best the way Kyuss invented it; cranked out of a bass amp, prioritising volume over sound quality.

While ‘Bangers’ may not be ‘Blues for the Red Sun’ or even ‘King of the Road’, it certainly exhibits the raw potential for Barn Burner to get there. To be brutally honest, nobody has really stepped forward to comprehensively seize the stoner-kingdom crown since the fall of Kyuss…but if Barn Burner keep up this kind of form, keep up the touring and get a couple of albums under their belt, they could climb their way up through the Princes-in-Waiting to sit upon that hallowed throne. ‘Bangers’ is an excellent first step on that road.

Bangers is available to buy or download at Play.com

Genre : Progressive Metal

Article by Phil Sim