Big Iron - American Pleasure Drive
by Marissa Bruce

The self-proclaimed "Bastard Sons of Texas Bred Southern Metal" have done an outstanding job of summing up all that is unruly about Texas. Fast guitars, wild women (see website) and a southern fried metal sound, which feels a like Pantera resurrected at times. Like all good bands, these hard hitters have taken what was good about their benefactors and amplified it with their own influences. Just listen to the wah-petal that creeps out in several of Alapeño guitar solo’s, combined that with Dan’s bouncy metal growls- ah, this duo takes me back to the days when the metal was crisp and the words were audible.

Now for the tunes, I swayed from loving it to wanting to fast forward on a couple, for example ballads like "The Truth" had a forced sound and “American Pleasure Drive” had a style that didn’t seem to match up with the rest of the album. But the band quickly won me back with gritty tunes like “Mouth Hole”, which featured intense air battles with Alepeño and Dan bouncing back n forth countering each other with words and riffs- and lyrics like “let the backwash blow your mind”- personifying that much missed 80’s raunch! Then you have songs like “Vanish”, which I consider the most original and badass song on the album. It opens with a speed metal guitar assault and then swaggers into some sultry poetic muses like “the beauty that was you disappears…draining ever so slowly…hollowing from the inside out, your soul half inside your open head.”

I know this is stating the obvious, but these guys have been pretty careful to not curse on much of the album. This may give them a chance to get radio play with breakout tracks like “Falling Down”. My overall impression of this album is that I would have cut out about 3 of the 11 tracks, but I enjoyed the hell out of the rest of it! If you want to buy the CD, its $10 bucks on their website, which is quite entertaining, the drunk of the month pics are classic!