Infernal Overdrive
Last Rays of the Dying Sun
Small Stone

Discovering that Boston hero* Marc Schleicher has surfaced as the front man for New Jersey rock n’ road warriors Infernal Overdrive is one hell of an early Christmas present, my friends. Hell, I’m not sure I’d be here today if it wasn’t for Schleicher’s brawlin’ brand of East Coast riff n’ roll, so to hear him once again stranglin’ the six-string like a twenty dollar hooker is something special; a sure sign that the wheel of the American rawk machine is back in the grip of one of its most prolific drivers. Last Rays of the Dying Sun, the band’s full-length debut, is, quite simply, arena rock for dive bars, like KISS or Cheap Trick on a chain link tour through Southern wilds, and the way they saturate it with razor-backed hooks, sky high solos, nasty drum fills, and blacktop lingo (“I-95,” “Electric Street Cred,” “Rip It Out,” “Motor”) will lead a man to submit himself to a life of drinkin’, cheatin’, lyin’, and dyin’. Or, if you prefer, a life of glory. You know, I don’t think this one actually comes out until 2012, but either way, Small Stone has finished this year off — or started the next — on a definite high note.

*I’m not from Boston, but I have spent many years there vicariously through people much cooler than me, and I would be utterly shocked to find out that anyone who played in Cracktorch, Antler, and Quintain Americana isn’t a hero in that town.

Listen to “Rip It Out” from Last Rays of the Dying Sun!

Black Cobra
Invernal
Southern Lord

Invernal, the fourth full-length from Bay Area duo Black Cobra,  is every bit the cracked teeth, world swallowing, gaping Hell mouth I expected it to be, but the urgency and desire with which I have embraced its festering lips and drank in its putrid stench has surprised even me. The visceral battery of sludge Rafa Martinez (drums) and Jason Landrian (guitar and vocals) unleash sounds like Matt Pike taking a rusty-chained whipping from Kerry King and Tom Araya — and there’s only two of ‘em! Whether it’s Kurt Ballou’s production work or the band’s overwhelming desire to harness the force of charging thunder into suffocating black riffs, Invernal pounds out eight cuts of unrelenting rotten roll much braver, louder, and nastier than any Black Cobra album that’s come before. This here is proof that sludge doesn’t have to be prosaic, that it can attack you like a zombie ape and bite your fucking head off.

Listen to “Avalanche” from Invernal!

Maylene and the Sons of Disaster
IV
Ferret Music

I’ve never been able to keep track of Maylene’s line-up from album to album, and, in fact, it looks like there’s a few new beards this time around as well, but what I have been able to keep track of is the Alabama band’s Southern-roasted biker rock, which has always tasted as consistently good as a pig on a spit. The band’s appeal as white trash jug guzzlers has always carried certain weight with me, the inbred rage of album’s I through III irrevocably bad-ass, a lethal mix of metalcore and steel-eyed country power fused by shack burnin’ riffs and shit-drunk hooks. However, it seems as though someone filtered the swamp water Maylene’s been sippin’ for inspiration because with the exception of opening track “In Dead We Dream,” which is as close as the band comes to retaining any ounce of their previous nastiness, IV is — to put it in terms familiar to the band — a disaster. The frothy energy has fizzled out, the dirty heaviness has been cleaned up, and vocalist Dallas Taylor’s maniacal, backwoods barking has been carried away on some cruel prairie wind. In fact, a good deal of IV‘s songs sound like goth-treated modern day Bon Jovi ballads, produced exclusively for radio mediocrity. It ends, as all their albums do, with a back porch sun-downer courtesy of “Drought of ’85″ (that is if you completely disregarding whatever the hell “Off to the Laughing Place” is supposed to be, and I suggest you do), but its predictable reprieve comes much too late. It’s not the biggest disappointment of the year (no one’s going to take that honour away from Black Tide), but instead of tearing my shirt off and wrapping my mouth around an exhaust pipe I’m snacking on an apple and moseying on down the road.

Listen to “In Dead We Dream” from IV!