Artist: Fireball Ministry
Label: Century Media
Release: 2006
Rating: 4/5
With Fireball Minsitry, the listener can always strike a real pact that won’t leave them hanging! These guys have an innate musical sense for what it means to be distinctive and to be the real deal! The true school of seventies hard rock. No frills, no needless makeup, no blowing smoke. Fireball Ministry always serve up a firmly grounded experience of that dirty rock ‘n’ roll pulse straight to your teeth, with an erotic vibe that gives you the sense, every single moment, that the band carries that real “mojo” in them, the kind that fills you with such raw rocker energy that you see sparks in front of your eyes!
On the new record the band of course still carries the influence of Black Sabbath, especially in the riffing and the Ozzy-esque stoner vocals, but Fireball Ministry also make no secret of their dirty barreling through the simple but skin-piercingly penetrative riffs of Motorhead and AC/DC (s)explosiveness. Of course, there are references to retro “eighties” through “nineties” bands like Kyuss, Queens Of The Stone Age, Corrosion Of Conformity, Monster Magnet or Spiritual Beggars, and Fireball Minsitry like to toss more than obvious elements of doom rock, stoner rock and blues into the shape of their songs here and there.
Fireball Ministry are a band you wish at any moment would show up in the pub down the street, especially once you’ve knocked back a few mugs of beer. Bikers! Keep an eye on Fireball Ministry! The album is crowned with consistency, and the songs sit on equal footing with each other in terms of expressive power. There are no peaks, or to put it differently: every song is a peak, to borrow the language of politicians, who always say everything and nothing. Let’s put it this way instead. Every song is a winner.
Judging by the title, “Their Rock Is Not Our Rock” is a parody of music critics’ analyzing and their comparisons between the style of Firenball Ministry and the style of other bands. The band’s third album is a new, convincing, raw, erogenous rocker’s mass that does pull toward the seventies giants here and there, but it’s all sawed off with their own big balls, which with decisive punch always tip the scales in their own favor. The sound is garage-raw, and it feels like the band is playing at a gig in the yard next door or in a boozy dive, and that’s definitely one of the biggest charms, bringing to the album all the childlike naivety of the totally primal sound that the experience of rock’n’roll can offer, if you handle it right, of course! Fireball Ministry are a rare breed, rare in today’s renewed revival of dinosaur hard rock culture, one of those who truly deserve to be firmly separated from the commercial wave of revivalists! So forget about Wolfmother, Jet or Dallas Crane!
Lineup
James A. Rota II – guitar, vocals
Emily Burton – guitar
Johny Chow – bass guitar
John Oreshnick – drums
Production
Nick Raskulinecz
Track List
1. It Flies Again
2. Sundown
3. The Broken
4. In The End
5. Hellspeak
6. Two Tears
7. Under The Thunder
8. Spill The Demons
9. Rising From The Deep
10. Save The Saved
Album length: 43.52
