High-octane nicotine-voiced bar-room-rock… almost
Released 9 June and reviewed by Ian Savage
You know how Buddhists believe that when a Dalai Lama dies, the mantle immediately passes to a child born in right kind of area and timeframe? And AC/DC are pretty much done, in all bar an official announcement? Yeah, this metaphor doesn’t work.
Texas’ Broken Teeth are an unashamed group of old-school hard rockers who’ve been treading the beer-soaked stages of their homeland and beyond for the past twenty years. With our beloved Acca Daca struggling along on their last legs, 4 On The Floor is pretty obviously their grab for the high-octane nicotine-voiced bar-room-rock crown.
It’s a good effort. Frontman Jason McMaster has the throaty snarl of Bon Scott and the snappy delivery of Brian Johnson, and the guitars (courtesy of Jared Tuten and David Beeson) invoke nothing more than classic-era Young brothers. The problem is…yeah, there’s nothing new here, at least for the first six or seven tracks.
For an AC/DC fan, it kinda turns into ‘name-that-tune’; get a few like-minded friends ‘round, and see how long it takes for someone to identify the riffs or melodies. It’d make a killer drinking game, thinking about it…but it’s not great for an objective listener to be thinking “I know that riff…and that guitar sound…and that beat…”
BUT…there’s a big BUT. The last third of the album (and I’ve no idea why it was left so long) features ’Never Dead’ which breaks away from the AC/DC parody of the first two-thirds of ‘4 On The Floor’ to provide a genuinely touching tribute to Lemmy and Motörhead, done at the kind of breakneck tempo that they’d approve, and then…no, sorry, it’s back to sub-AC/DC again.
I struggle to recommend any album on the strength of one song…and I’m not going to. If you’re an old-school rock fan, you’ve likely got every lick, riff and melody that Broken Teeth play within your record collection somewhere – but I’d also wager that they’d be great fun live. You probably don’t have to own this record to enjoy it, though.
Track list:
- Four On The Floor
- Sinful
- All Or Nothing
- Getcha Some
- Borrowed Time
- House Of Damnation
- Let The War Machine Roll
- Never Dead
- All Day Sucker
- Rock Bottom
