Old Dirty Buzzard - What A Weird Hill To Die On

Featuring ex-members of the bands Holy Terror, Zeke, Agent Steel, Mind Shaker and The Kings of Cavalier, the Washington based trio Old Dirty Buzzard have hit the ground running with their impressive full-length debut What A Weird Hill To Die On.  As soon as you hit play (or drop the needle) and the thick, lumbering chords of their cover of The Charlie Daniels Band’s “Long Haired Country Boy” hit your speakers, you know you are in for a treat.  Somewhat reminiscent of Black Label Society, their version is slow, doomy, dirty and sleazy, and above all, heavy.  Picking up the pace for the next couple of tracks, “Coughing On The House Of Cards” comes across like a dirtier, sleazier Motorhead with a bit of stoner rock, while “Lies” screams pure Motorhead 101.  Following the lumbering, yet powerful, slow and sludgy instrumental “Paleozoic” is the gritty rocker “Corpse Shoveler”, which is enhanced by some great fuzzed out guitar.  Another cover is up next in the form of Junior Brown’s “Highway Patrol”, an all-out hard rocker with a hint of the original’s honky tonk swagger.  Providing a real showcase for the guitar work (which is actually top notch throughout the album) is “Hammer Coming Down”, a powerful track that is as heavy as its title would imply.  While the band has managed to keep things diverse and fresh up to here, they manage to go even further with the last two tracks, both of which differ a bit from the rest of the album.  “Path Of The Dead”, at over seven minutes long, is a darker track with a bit of a black metal mystique and more of a percussive foundation.  Closing out the album perfectly is “The Reckoning”, which clocks in at over eleven minutes, and has the hard charging power and shifting tempos of an Iron Maiden epic, but musically is much darker and grittier.  What A Weird Hill To Die On is a fantastic introduction to a band that I hope to be hearing a lot more from in the future.  

(Rotten Records)