CAR
WASH - The Howling Diablos (Total
Energy/Alive)
While I can't pretend to have had as much familiarity with the music of Detroit's
Howling Diablos as I have with the name, it seems as though my life must have
been seriously lacking. This disc has been lodged in the CD player for 
the
best part of a month, and I can't get over just how absolutely filthy it sounds.
In 2004, singer Tino Gross produced an RL Burnside album for Fat Possum,
and was so moved by the experience that he decided to apply a more rootsy
blues brush to his band's already well-established style of turntable-assisted
urban/blues rock. (Apparently Kid Rock was once a member of their line-up.)
If this is back to their roots, then they've been planted in dark soil fertilised
by rotting human remains.
By the sound of "Carwash", the Howling Diablos haven't so much done
a deal with the devil as bought a shelf company with the old bastard and seed-funded
a national franchise chain of dope houses and knock shops. "Oh, it's
a damn shame the way you treat me, baby," warns Tino Gross on the self-titled
opener, and you know by the tone in his voice that he is NOT fucking around.
A treacherous backbeat (this album features the best sounding drums I've heard
in years) anchors a menacing, black-hearted sax refrain from Johnny Evans,
and slidework so hot that guitarist Mike Smith must have to play with asbestos
gloves. And that's just ONE track (there are nine others).
What it isn't is groundbreaking or new. The blues has been re-interpreted,
re-shaped and re-done so many times it must feel like a McDonalds chicken
nugget. In spite of their previous history to put a new spin on the old form
(and I'm not suggesting their output's been bad, I haven't heard it) The Diablos
don't do anything stylistically startling as much as play the shit supremely
well.
Case in point: "Prison Train", a jaunty strut which lays on the
death row irony thick, as some of the finest blues so often does. Here's a
guy who shot up his girlfriend full of something life-shortening, got tagged
for murder and is about to fry. Deservedly so, you might say, depending on
your stance on capital punishment, but if it was you being plugged into 240
volts, would you sing about it?
Drummer Shannon Boone's no slouch but they've replaced him on three tracks
with one of the greats in ex-Detroit Wheels vet Johnny "Bee" Badanjek.
No complaints there. Badanjek's one of the finest drummers to have graced
a stool and adds his own subtleties to "Easy Street", "Stop
Runnin' Your Mouth" and "A Woman (Like Mine)".
"Stop Running Your Mouth" is a brute of a thing, wailing harp buried
under a mountain of bottom end and an insistent, grinding guitar. The Diablos
can rock, as well as paddle in the swamp.–
The Barman
3/4