The bands I grew up listening to are all middle aged these days. They are probably driving mini-vans, dropping their kids off at day care, or trying to get their former band mates together for some sort of ‘come back’ tour where they play their best album from start to finish for all the now middle aged fans. Local H isn’t one of those bands. Where most of those 90s acts are lamenting over the good old days of cd sales, low budget music videos, and 120 Minutes, Local H spits on the sidewalk, shrug their shoulders and continue playing the angst ridden rock they mastered years before as if no time has passed.
Hey, Killer is the eighth LP from the Zion, Illinois natives and despite being twenty years older since the last time they had a ‘Buzz Clip’ on MTV, the album sounds as fresh and unrelenting as a debut record. In fact, I may go as far as saying that Hey, Killer is lean, hungry, and has a lot to prove much like any new band on the scene trying earn credibility or make a name for themselves. It’s what Local H has done from the get go. Why change now?
Hey, Killer‘s opening track “The Last Picture Show In Zion” could be about a lot of things, pretentious scene kids or maybe even of the most literal sense, the last drive in theater in their hometown, but I see it as a poke at the self-aware hipster laden scene that rock n roll has become in the past ten years. From The White Stripes to The Black Keys, rock n roll duos have become a gimmick of two guys playing stripped down, pentatonic heavy songs of broken hearts and irony. Local H knows the score and this song is a big middle finger to that scene. These guys don’t need gimmicks or ironic hooks, They’ve been there, done that, and emerged as the hardest rocking duo to ever grace rock n roll (the New Orleans punk band Penguin coming in at a close second, but that’s topic for another review)
Being only a two-piece band, Local H have mastered a certain groove where drums, bass, guitar, and vocal not only compliment each other in the studio but move parallel organically as if they are all one instrument, something that is apparent in songs like “Mansplainer” and “Gig Bag Road”.
There’s nothing overly ambitious on Hey, Killer but there is one particular thing I noticed that I haven’t seen in any previous Local H record: The use of tension. Throughout the album, each song builds upon a certain tension. The kind of tension that reminds me of two people meeting in a dark alley at midnight. You know something bad is going to happen, but it’s a matter of when it happens. Even on the more delicate moments on the record like the song “One Of Us” it feels like it’s going to explode into a fury of distorted fuzz and screaming at any given moment. That sort of tension and unpredictability makes the entire album exciting just how rock music should be.
Local H have been around a while and they know what works and what doesn’t. They play to their strengths and ignore anything that doesn’t fit the description of hard edge alternative rock. Where all of the other bands have grown up, matured, sip coffee, and share stories of their children playing together on play dates, Local H open beer bottles with their teeth, compare scars, and consistently put out unabashed rock n roll for the people who still don’t mind going to shows even if it means they accidently get puked on, or get into an occasional bar fight. Most importantly, they prove that despite most of the scene being oversaturated with metrosexual trend followers, Rock N Roll is NOT dead, it’s just packed up it’s things and moved into the vacant derelict building down the street where it can play as loud as it wants, when it wants, just how it should be.
Rating: 5 /5