Artist: Raygun Rebels
Label: SAOL Music
Release: 2011
Running time: 40:16
Rating: 3/5
Raygun Rebels are from Rosenheim, Germany. Formed in 2007, they didn’t hang around on home Bavarian soil for long. Instead they packed up and made a revolutionary leap straight into the beating heart of American rock n’ roll: Los Angeles and Hollywood. To play “stripped-down” music built first and foremost on the arrogance and directness of “rock n’ roll”, you’ve got to have big balls! And the very move by a band that bet everything on getting close to success on a saturated scene proves that Raygun Rebels are in no way short on guts.
And that courage has obviously “driven the guys home”. The debut studio album couldn’t carry a more fitting title (“Bring Me Home”). After landing in the US, last year the guys played a string of club gigs, including shows at the famous trendy clubs of West Hollywood, starting with the Viperroom, owned by none other than the pirate of the Caribbean himself, Johnny Depp, and ending with the legendary Whiskey A Go Go, where Guns N’ Roses took their first big steps and where today’s hardened bastards of roaring rock n’ roll filth Motorhead once stood on stage, as did the towering, immortal bluesman B.B. King.
With that much hustle and graft, the band won over the label Saol Records, who also put out the studio debut. The band was already sending it around to the media as a demo last fall. Raygun Rebels are another bunch of lads digging bits of recent rock history out of mothballs, with rock n’ roll drenched in the vice of glam sleaze. The dose of fun and lucid, mischief-packed lyrics, where the surplus testosterone in the blood bursts out in abundance, along with the youthful swagger and recklessness of four young colts, admits no retreat.
The album has two fundamental flaws. The first is the vocalist’s clumsy use of English, and the singing is none too impressive to begin with (read: a full measure of nasal whining!). The stiff English keeps the (basically weak) vocals from making the best use of the available space for the plasma energy that could build the magnetism of the overall sound, the kind that would instantly spellbind the listener and hypnotically glue them in place. The second minus is the production. It “hides” the guitars’ contribution in the mix. The guitars are set too quiet. The drums are easily the most audible thing, while the riffing cowers in the background. Likewise, the otherwise lively work of the dynamic, active bass line is often completely buried under the drum production. The resulting “sloppiness” of the studio sound treatment keeps the otherwise nicely arranged songs, with properly placed core compositional ideas that flow smoothly and are hugely likable, from having their full impact. You can find plenty of empty space in the guitar work, for example, in the verse of the closing title track. Yet that very song also proves that Raygun Rebels can be multilayered and that they don’t just fire up stripped-down rock n’ roll marches cranked out on “one-two-three-four”. The song Bring Me Home is in fact an interesting head-on collision between the potent dilettantism of Guns N’ Roses-style filth and the old-school heavy rock “drive” of U.F.O.
You have to cut the band some slack on production, since they’re still young and right at the start. With the commitment they’ve shown, embodied in capping four years together with a studio debut, an upgrade to the sound on future records isn’t far off. Those very sonic fixes, aiming for more organic feel, dynamics and a sense of liveliness, are a must. Especially given that the stripped-down charisma of the band’s rock n’ roll craft also carries a healthy dose of blues rhetoric (certain transitions between riffs, and the solos).
With better production down the line, Raygun Rebels will find it easier to define their own expressive groove, which they can nurture and build on without a care, and at the same time tell the world (once again) that a reheated cliché can be pretty darn lovable when it’s firing on all cylinders in a sonic-chemical erection.
This review was written in collaboration between RockLine and Rock Hard Slovenija.
Lineup
Danny Raygun – vocals, guitar
Dom Raygun – guitar
Pelle Ericson – bass
Flick Rick – drums
Production
Raygun Rebels
Tracklist
1. Here We Are
2. Lay Down Baby
3. Financial Distress Blues
4. Goodbye
5. I Want You
6. Let Me Go
7. The Killer
8. Bring Me Home
