Southern Drinkstruction are from Rome, Italy and this is the ultimate Death ‘n’ Roll machine, a pavement pizza straight in your face! Drink, Fight & Fuck!!! (Featuring members of Corpsefucking Art)
After reading that in a press release, you feel compelled to check it out and see how this actually sounds and surprisingly, it’s actually really good!
The name Southern Drinkstruction alone is enough to conjure up thoughts on what the band might sound like but there’s a few surprises up their collective sleeve which you may either love or hate. Luckily for some of us it’s a love relationship as this band pulls out a weird but cool hybrid of death metal, thrash and old school rock n’roll. Classified as Death n’ Roll in some circles, the death metal aspect is actually much less prominent than the label suggests. Vocally it’s as gutteral as Cannibal Corpse but the riffs, the grooves, the music itself kinda lends itself towards more hooky and rock oriented grooves.
There’s a fair bit of thrash metal aspects on a lot of songs like the opening track “Appetite For Drinkstruction” which almost has a little of that early Guns N’ Roses gritty vibe, and “Ass Parking Bitch” which is energetic and fast paced. But it’s the almost stoner rock type styles found here that give the music something really worth paying attention too, that latter aforementioned track ending in a real bluesy, doom style which can be found in various parts of many songs on the album. “Goatboy” is slower paced, sludgey as hell with a chugger of a riff that crosses into thrashier moments back and forth. The title track is a highlight though with it’s swampy backbeat, swaggery bluesy, stoner rocky, doom laden and all of the above in the world of Black Sabbath inspired music.
The Aptly titled “Elvis In Chains” pretty much sums up a good chunk of what this band is musically about, it’s death and roll in it’s primal form with a hell of a swinging groove that almost reminds me of Toxic Holocaust in a way. But the list goes on, from rockers like “Back From Your Hell” to the greasy “Bloody Stone”, there’s a little bit of Motorhead going on here but all done with some brutal growls that just somehow fit with the music. It may be a turn off for some who simply want to listen to some rockin’ tunes but give it some time and it will grow on you and hell, it may even turn you onto some of the more extreme forms of metal out there! Either way this is a great album that combines a mixture of catchy as hell riffs and grooves with some of the more extreme aspects of metal in a nice, subtle way.