It seems that folk are not too comfortable with this 'bizarre' album, which is a surprise because when you cut to the nub, 'Bikers Welcome! Ladies Drink Free' is just a raw, hillbilly country album done by a bunch of old rockers, and a pretty impressive heavy duty bunch they are too. There's Buck Satan (that's Ministry's Al Jourgensen to you and me, guv), Rick Nielson (Cheap Trick), Tony Campos (Static-X) and Mike Scaccia (Rigor Mortis).


Together with a load of country artists, they've created an album of rough-edged hillbilly country music with Metal attitude. If you are familiar with Hayseed Dixie or Springsteen's Seeger Sessions, then you'll pretty much have a good idea about what's going on here, the title summing up what this album is all about.

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There are a few understated electric bits, but then it doesn't need anything more because the fiddles, mandolins, banjos and lap steel are more than capable of holding their own, and I don't know who it is but someone blows a mean harp too.

Killer tracks? 'Quicker Than Liquor', 'Down The Drain', 'What's Wrong With Me?', 'Friend Of The Devil' and 'Drug Store Truck Driving Man' would be good places to start, and 'The Only Time I'm Sober Is When You're Gone' has a great Dave Edmunds groove to it.

Yep, it's that Al Jourgensen bloke again

For all it being a country music album, 'Bikers Welcome! Ladies Drink Free' is loaded with a whopping huge jab of hick-baiting humour and has more zip than a lot of balls-out Metal albums I've heard recently. Let's just say Buck Satan & the 666 Shooters are as cool as fuck, and leave it at that.

To be fair, I think 'Bikers Welcome! Ladies Drink Free' is going to be one of those 'love it/hate it' things. To some, it will be too country and to others it will not be country enough. To the enlightened, however, it will be a brilliantly perfect soundtrack to a lazy sunny Sunday afternoon in the backyard with a few beers and a smoke. That's where you'll find me.

The mutt's nuts.

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NB: A word to the wise here: there is a very mediocre pub rock band up in Hartlepool (that's in the North East of England to those who don't know) called Buck Satan and the 666 Shooters. They are nothing to do with Al Jourgensen's lot, nor are they anywhere near as good. Don't say I don't warn you.

07.11.11