Practical interest in cloudless spaces has steadily waned since the golden age. If Yuri Gagarin had not been so well placed in the context of various propaganda sermons, we would not have remembered anything. How many of you are genuinely interested in space exploration? Raise your hands!
Okay, you can put it down. I believe that we have enough enthusiasts. But it’s about the general trend of fading interest. Unfortunately, a similar thing happened on the rockabilly scene, and today I will tell you about the last successful expedition of the Mars Attacks team, which once thundered throughout the solar system, the 2013 album titled Blood and Thunder.
My personal journey of getting to know this band is amazing, because it started with a promo video by the band’s drummer, David Karlinger. It’s a very unusual and stylistic video, where David not only plays drums and harmonica, but also rides a pickup truck and drinks a beer. It was a memorable sight, and back then it made us believe in the third wave of rockabilly, which would cover us all, and tattoo parlors, craft bars, and barbershops would become new temples for us. As we can see now, all of the above companies have failed to create their own unique rockabilly culture that would be viable in the long run.
However, David himself, or rather his team, is musically nothing fiercely sweetly innovative, as the same Top Cats do, or overly psychotic, like the same space zombie bloodsuckers. This is quite authentic rockabilly, except that it is much cleaner than many other historical reenactors. Well, the drum parts are much more interesting here.
If we talk about my favorite records and tracks on them, then at one time I listened to the first four albums. Here they are, from left to right: Run For Your Life (1999), Dirty Tricks (2003), Circle Of Love (2006) and Follow Me! (2008). And… we won’t listen to them today! It’s not just about the vicissitudes of licensing streaming services, but also about the desire of the team itself. Indeed, in 2011, the mega-album “Recaptured!” was released, consisting of selected tracks from the first four albums.
Such independent compilations are usually accompanied by a noticeable rethinking of their work, but the album that we are analyzing today is not fundamentally different: except that its sound design is much cleaner and clearer, without playing vintage games.
This bloodthirsty album opens with a completely herbivorous country song Slow Man.
This is followed by the harmonica Count to Three, and it is much more advantageous, due to the excellent vocal rhythms.
Heartbreakin’ Man reminded me of the royal My Baby Left Me, remixed with Folsom Prison Blues. Very cheerful and fresh.
Such a team cannot do without space adventures, which is what Outer Space, Inside the Bar tells about. It’s very soulful and has a couple of interesting hooks, which are again on the rhythmic plane.
I Gave You My Life is performed in the spirit of a concentrated teen pop song from the golden era. Ricky Nelson winks mischievously between the lines.
The tale of Train to Hell is unexpectedly measured. Well, that’s not what a psycho soul expects from a song with a similar name. But this is a pleasant disruption of expectations. It’s like you’ve found a very cool spaghetti western you’ve never seen before.
Deep Down in the Mud is also unexpectedly life-affirming. Well, the blues is still played in a major. Yes, and the muffled trumpet adds color, wow!
In addition to a lot of interesting rhythmic nuances, dashing and non-standard classical harmonic moves are also a distinctive feature of the Martians. This is clearly visible in Voodoo Lady. It would be a completely different song if it weren’t for those cheeky chords.
Overreaction Blues exudes a lot of Latin American flavor. I’m not really good at all the passionate southern stuff, so I’ll just say that it turned out very well here.
The title track, Blood and Thunder, seems to be the most violent song of these kindhearts. It is imbued with an atmosphere of pagan dancing and primitive rage, and certainly makes the soul feel uncomfortable with the volume of drums and percussion instruments when performed live. Yes, it’s a sore subject.
The Only Driver is generally the usual blues on duty, although the lyrical part about the sexualization of cars … well, however, it was already with the Queen.
But the subsequent Lonely Nights has very interesting sources of inspiration. I can clearly hear The Doors and Morisson in it, which are perfectly suited to rockabilly soil. By God, why hasn’t anyone done this before?
Promised Land is a perky country with vagrant vibes. How did Cash sing? I’ve been everywhere, everywhere!
In the Alley Baby would seem to be between Presley and Cash again, but the harmonica distinguishes this composition favorably.
And the album ends with I Don’t Know, an exemplary farewell ballad. Very emotional and too prophetic.
This ends the story of one of the bands that were able to give authentic rockabilly its face. It’s very difficult to confuse them with anyone else, back then and now, David Karlinger went on to play a fierce American in Deadbeatz. They are also a good and original team, but to a lesser extent they are rock-a-billy. Instead of the rockabilly gloss, there’s the original blues filth. This team is also worth mentioning, but in a different article.
I recently heard about a conspiracy theory that NASA’s latest mission to the moon somehow coincided very well with the release of a new neural network for creating videos. Well, how Stanley Kubrick’s Space Odyssey once coincided with the Apollo missions. Oh, those who believe in the existence of the moon! This seed of conspiracy theory rhymes very amusingly with the dominance of AI artists in country music. But let’s not lose faith in the best. Someday we will go to the stars of the rock and roll galaxies again and dance a twist on the Martian sand!
