Bass Drum of Death

One Liner: Noisy garage punk goodness

Wikipedia Genre: garage rock, garage punk, noise rock, punk rock

Home: Brooklyn (by way of Oxford, Mississippi)

Poster Position: Level 4 (19)
Weekend One Only.  

Friday.

Thoughts:  Some of this sounds very much like White Reaper.  Do they share the same singer?  Apparently not!  This band is fronted by John Barrett, who originally formed the band as a one-man band in 2008.  The first two albums are him, alone, doing all of the bits.  Formed in Oxford, MS, they later moved to NYC to get plugged in to a better scene.  It is a great band name.  Even though it would be even more great if they actually had a monster drum that would blow your speakers once every track.

Their tunes have been featured in all sorts of things - movies like Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance and Fist Fight, video games like MLB 2K12 or Grand Theft Auto V, commercials for H&M and Nascar, TV shows like Vampire Diaries and Altered Carbon.

Five real albums and six EPs, although not all of that is available on Spotify.  Their biggest track is from 2013's eponymous album, called "Crawling After You."  11.6 million streams.

I like that insistent bass line underneath there.  This is absolutely my kind of jam.  Their second-most streamed is from the debut album Gb City, from 2011.  "Get Found" with 5.8 million streams.

Another raw banger.  I'm comparing this more and more to the White Reaper sound, which is likely unfair since this came out years before I heard of White Reaper, so its probably those dudes who are ripping off the sound!  But if you listen to both bands, the singing style is undeniably similar.  And because I really like the Reaper, this is freaking fun too!  2014's Rip This also has a Hives sound to it, like that rad album that came out around 2004 or so.

I kind of figured that Barrett had ended up in Oxford for college or something, but no, he is actually a native of Oxford, Mississippi.  He left for New York to release several of his albums, but then returned to Oxford during the pandemic to reset

Finally, the new album has been out a few months, Say I Won't, and so the stream counts on these are pretty low so far.  This is apparently the first album where he really treated the whole thing like a band and allowed collaborators to help out.  Patrick Carney of the Black Keys helped out with production.  Top track is "Say Your Prayers" with 314k.

That poor kid.  I hope he burns that church down.  Ohnoes!  Get up, kid!  Listen to 30 Seconds to Mars and it will wake you up!  Good track.  Apparently, Mike Kerr from Royal Blood collaborated on that track as well.  Cool.

I like this stuff a lot.  Fun, loud, raw - sounds like a good time!