A timeless, sonically rich album that transports you to a windswept ghost town, a grimy back alley in a mob-run city, or a mad scientist’s secret hidaway.
Crushing versions of classics “Holy Diver,” “Heaven and Hell,” “The Last in Line,” “Rainbow in the Dark,” “The Mob Rules,” and “Man on the Silver Mountain.”
Ballin’ is less frantic than their debut LP, Irony, and miles away from their molar-diggin’, unhinged Don Fleming-produced after-birth announcement EP, Dig.
Two discs of live Dead Boys is mebbe more than you’ll wanna listen to in one sitting. Maybe you could listen to one, then go out to a bar and get shitfaced.
Plodding drums, serious powerchords and grinning vocals merrily punkify all that would be angst in the sometimes honky tonk, occasionally folksy Paydirt.
There are comparable tracks to Hot (a calypso-ish tune, some foot stompers, some ballads), and a pseudo-mid European folk tune, but mostly – it’s Dixieland.
When the band launches from some age-old slow mosh part into a thumpa-thumpa-thumpa part they think is bad-ass, I have to grin and think these guys rule!