Soul Butchers – Second Death
Buffalo’s Soul Butchers have always been a force in the local scene, known for their high-octane live shows that leave ears ringing and soles smoking. Three years in the making, their latest full-length album, Second Death, has finally arrived, soaked in all things that give the four-piece rock band their signature snarling edge. The 13-track effort is another blistering document of the band’s unique blend of noise rock and garage punk, bottling the raw energy of their stage presence into a calculated and surprisingly diverse collection of songs this time around. Second Death is our album of the week.
The album’s sound is immediate and raw, not unlike previous Butchers releases, but this time around the band recorded and engineered the entire project themselves before handing it over to John Angelo for mixing and mastering. The result: an album on which the band had the breathing room to do what they wanted, and it shows. The production is rock solid, the tracks explore some exciting new territory, and Soul Butchers’ trademark bottom-of-your-jeans-pocket grit is faithfully preserved.
From the opening riff-centric assault of “Deadbeat,” Allan Uthman’s guitar work is front and center, laying down thick, memorable lines that borrow from punk, blues, and classic hard rock. The rhythm section of Rob Barnette on bass and Joe Peluso on drums is the band’s relentless engine, particularly on tracks like the bass-driven “Feel Like Hell” and explosive “The Worst Part,” providing a reliably powerful low end that allows the rest of the sound to spiral into glorious noise.
At the heart of that chaos is vocalist Justin Rowland, whose performance on the album is nothing short of feral. He’s a force of nature throughout, shifting from the delightfully unhinged delivery on “Murder Hole” to the manic, howling desperation of noise-punk ripper “Don’t Look in My Window.” After hearing “The Worst Part,” it’s hard to believe the man still has vocal cords at all. Risk of permanent damage be damned, Rowland screams, shrieks, bellows, and belts his way through the record, showcasing some of Second Death’s most aggressive and rebellious moments.
But for all its confrontational noise, the album is hardly a one-trick pony. Some of Second Death’s most exciting moments come when the band veers from their roots a bit. “Holy Ghost” stands out as a highlight, diving headfirst into this swaggering, noisy blast of rockabilly with a suitably spooky and guttural vocal performance. The title track, the longest on the record, is an admirable exploration of psychedelic rock done in true Butchers’ fashion, with serpentine sections of instrumentation building toward this white-hot spine-rattler of a scream that kickstarts the song’s explosive break-shit ending. The album even closes with a touch of glam metal on “Utica.”
That genre-bending dexterity is matched by a sharp, often anti-establishment lyrical approach that permeates the album. “Antipathy” pairs one of the album’s catchier riffs with the cheerfully nihilistic howl of “I just wanna watch this world burn.” The award for juxtaposition, though, goes to “Shoot ‘Em Down,” a track whose head-nodding, almost radio-rock structure is used to deliver a sardonic commentary on American gun culture–a point driven home by a cheeky single-finger salute to right-wing instigator Kyle Rittenhouse in the track’s liner notes on bandcamp. That kind of dissent is injected often, giving the tunes a smart and savage razor-sharp edge.
Second Death is the record Soul Butchers needed to make. It harnesses the sweat-soaked power of their live shows, and does it well without sacrificing an ounce of songwriting craft. It’s a record that should land squarely with anyone who appreciates the raw, primal energy of The Stooges, the monolithic riffs of Queens of the Stone Age, or the sneering punk ethos of the Dead Kennedys. And right at its core, it’s a downright essential slice of Buffalo rock worthy of your heavy rotation. Check it out.
Categorised in: Album of the Week
This post was written by Ronald Walczyk