Welcome to the meandering musical insights of Aaron Joy (me!), formerly known as the Roman Midnight Music Blog. Here you'll find nearly 750 reviews of CDs & DVDs of rock & metal in all its variations, mainstream & indie, good & bad, U.S. & foreign. A new review every Monday.

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December 2, 2011

Broken Bones ~ Fuck You & All You Stand For! (album review) ... When the Sex Pistols meet Slayer & have a child!


Style: heavy metal, punk
Label: Xtreem Music
Year: 2010
Home: England

Members: Bones ~ guitar
Oddy ~ bass
Quiv ~ vocals
Dave ~ drums
BB reminds me of the first couple albums by Savatage before Paul O'Neill took them out of the black Florida swamps & turned them from a heavy metal band into a prog rock symphony. Credited as having one of the earliest black metal albums with Sirens & guitarist Criss Oliva following the line of Randy Rhoads Savatage built up a fanbase with it's aggression & powerful guitar riffs. BB has a lot in common with them. Though one lost the aggression & disbanded while the other is going on over two decades with seven albums & might just be fiercer than ever. BB's sole remaining founding member Bones churns out riff after riff ... & when I say riffs I mean the melodic type of head-banging riff that has lots of sections & rhythmic patterns drawing from the Steve Vai palette not the current three chord chomp stomp that's a pale imitation. Against this onslaught the rhythm section pounds out fierce beats that one can imagine bouncing off the walls of a small club to headache levels, check out "Torture" for example. Vocalist Quiv who shouts with a snarl doesn't have much of a range but is a lot better vocalist than a lot of singers out there. The only problem is some poor production where the low end is sometimes weak & the vocals & guitar solos sometimes are a bit too low. It should be obvious from the title that BB has a punk slant throwing out socially-minded lyrics with such songs as "Persecution", "Hell Is For Heroes", "Minimum Wage", "House Of Frauds", "Stop Em Now", "Torture", "Downfall", "Brainwashed" & the bonus track, one of four re-recorded classic songs, "Wealth Rules" covering 9/11, senseless death, Nazis, corporations & obviously the government. Formed in 1983 BB has often been called a punk band but honestly it's more Sex Pistols meets Slayer, though the bonus tracks have a much more furious punk sound. It's the perfect balance for us metalheads who aren't too much into punk ... they've been cited as an influence by Metallica so that should turn the eyebrows up. BB broke up in 1989 but in 1998 Bones reunited with later members Quiv & Oddy, also a former vocalist, with new drummer Dave. Some have called this latest release their angriest & most intense ... no doubt there that this is a band not to mess with. These aren't young boys anymore but they're a lot more fierce than the generation that has followed them.

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