By John Sturm
There must be something in the water in Australia that that embeds itself into musicians. Something that makes them want to rock and roll, drink some beer, meet some ladies and essentially raise some hell. Well most musicians except maybe Stefan Dennis and Craig McLachlan. Before we crack on I’m going to promise you that I will only make one AC/DC reference in this review ok? (Excluding that one, pedants).
BRUCE! hail from the fabulously named Wollongong in New South Wales and are not afraid of embracing the usual Aussie stereotypes you might care to mention. Their Facebook page lists their interests as “YOUR DRINK, GIRL AND CAR KEYS” and in an interview with Sludge Factory they confirm, as I suspected, that their name derives from a classic Monty Python sketch. Whilst there is certainly humour running through this band, (they’re all called Bruce you know), there is nothing frivolous about the music on offer here.
Album opener ‘Hell Gig’ is essentially a hard rock re-imagining of ‘The Devil Went Down To Georgia’ but with more guitar and less fiddles obviously and kickstarts the album off in a fine fashion followed swiftly by ‘Money and Go’ which details the life (and frustrations) of being in a band… “You want it, You got it, Take your money and go”. Further on we delve into ‘Make You Proud’ in which lyrically singer Bruce informs his mother and brother that he’s going to make them proud. ‘Bottle in a Brown Paper Bag’ deals with police bribery. Later still, ‘Meanwhile in Norway’ seems to be a piss-take of the black metal with it’s growling vocals and jagged riffs. And then there’s the waltz section in ‘On the Road Again’….
All of this leads me to an uncertain conclusion about BRUCE! I’m not exactly sure what kind of band they want to be. Are they comedic? Are they social commentators? Perhaps that is the genius of BRUCE!, that they defy scrutiny and are simply a band that you need to have a beer to and get yourself into a big sweaty mess about. They’re a rock and roll band and perhaps, at the end of the day, that’s all that matters. Songs like ‘%99’ with it’s infections riffs and shouty-a-long chorus begs to be bellowed at full volume in a club after 7 pints of nectar.
As it should be.
And yes, even though they are Australian they don’t sound like AC/DC (take note Airbourne).
