The Bruisers

In the Pit: Live and Rare (TKO)
by Scott Hefflon

As the title states, this is a collection of live and unreleased/rare tracks by The Bruisers, a Boston/New Hampshire band credited as having inspired the new wave of Oi!/streetpunk in America. And after 10 years, singer Al Barr gained much larger name recognition by joining Dropkick Murphys and making that band finally sound the way it should. His songwriting and gruff voice work so well with DKM, it’s now hard to think of them without him. Thing with the Bruisers is that the music was never really great, the production always kinda dicey, and I, for one, never really cared for them. To me, there was a very good reason why they wallowed in obscurity for so long: They just weren’t all that. But now with Al in DKM, TKO sees fit to release some archival, never-before-heard stuff. So while I could care less, anyone curious about Al’s previous band or who collects every grunt the band ever recorded, well, here it is.
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