Another record review for Nutshaft, and a pretty damn strong record it is to. I'm looking forward to getting back to gig reviewing soon, though, I think I prefer that.
BARRELHAUS – AZIMUTH (self-release)
If the riff is the basic building block of rock music, then Azimuth is a Legoland day pass. For their second album no-nonsense duo BarrelHaus have retained the rugged simplicity of their debut but branched out, so although this album is still built from big riffs on a foundation of bigger riffs held together with ostinato putty, there are a number of variations on display. So, whilst ‘GAD’ is a slouching Sabbath beast, it’s immediately followed by the high-octane punkabilly of ‘How Did You Die Today, My Dear?’. ‘Red Rag’ has a lazy mariachi lope which is balanced by ‘Ballad Of The Former Mariner’ and its playful QOTSA blues-suet stickiness. ‘Diet Cheese’ waddles like an overfed ZZ Top whereas the bright, trebly chords of the excellently named ‘Your Friends Don’t Have To Like Each Other’ take us on a sprightly dance – at least until the heady grunge chorus, which makes you want to don a greasy old TAD T-shirt.
At a sliver over thirty minutes, Azimuth packs a lot into a small space, and is the sort of album you want to play again as soon as it’s finished (perhaps all those ruffs are coated in MSG). If there’s a downside it’s the lyrics, which are definitely not bad, but co-opt some pretty shopworn material - “It’s a game of give and take”, “Red rag to a bull”, “She doesn’t suffer fools” - but really the songs are just riff delivery systems, and it doesn’t matter what a track like ‘Down With His Ship’ is about, so long as the righteous bludgeoning anger is communicated. And did we mention the riffs?
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