One must never, as the saying goes, judge a book by its cover. It is equally dangerous to judge an album by its artwork. While the average stoner band may be happy to ply their trade behind images of deserts and oddly grim looking black and white shots of long hair and beards, Los Disidentes rumble out from behind a cover that looks like a cross between Desperado and a Terrorvision album. The mildly curious, therefore, might well be surprised to discover Los Disidentes are a fantastically tight, firmly-rooted-in-the-past stoner band with a penchant for glutinous riffs so treacly they make the sweet and sour chicken you had the other day look positively watery.
Appearing from out of a swirl of gothic organ, ‘Sir dang Jack’ is a smoke-fuelled gem of a track that cruises on Monster Magnet-esque beast of a riff, organ flourishes and vocals that have been hewn from a mountain of cigarettes and a lake of whiskey. With a huge sound that references the aforementioned Magnet, Kyuss and Screaming trees (courtesy of the heavy seventies vibe flowing through the music) it’s fair to say that fans of the green will get an almighty kick out of this glorious track, particularly when a thoroughly heavy riff obliterates everything in its path at around the four minute mark sending fans of the genre into apoplectic fits of joy. ‘All alone’, after following such a massive opener, has a hard task but accomplishes it with ease by kicking off with a bass riff that feels like it’s been summoned from the very depths of the earth while the guitars more than hold their own with the sound of a thousand Orange amps cranked up somewhere in the desert at noon blasting forth huge slabs of Black Sabbath. It is the sort of music that is so giddily in love with the simple life-affirming power of rock and roll that you can’t help but fall in love with it in turn and anyone who isn’t bouncing off their walls with a huge grin plastered dopily across their face by the end of the track is seriously reading the wrong website.
‘Chapter II’ is a faster track fizzing with off-kilter Josh-Homme style riffs and vocals that sit between stoner rock and punk while the piano-laden overtones of ‘brotherhood’ takes a strange but not unwelcome side-step into alternative rock hinting at a love of bands such as Sonic Youth amidst all the usual influences for a heavy stoner band. Having headed off on a tangent, the band return to hotter pastures with the sand-storm riff of ‘a beauty among the crowd’ which arrives courtesy of a riff drier than James Bond’s Martini and twice as suave; it’s an excellent track that somehow references Kyuss and Sebadoh in the same breath without breaking a sweat. Special mention at this point should go to the excellent percussive skills of the aptly named Billy Maverick who propels these songs with a propulsive vigour and subtle humour, the latter of which is most notable on the sleazy, slightly cheesy ‘backdoor woman’ that crams so many clichés into its four and a half minutes that it’s hard to know whether it’s the same band or not. The almighty riff of ‘pity the cheaters’ provides the answer, however, with a massive, lumbering beast of a riff that should only be safely observed from behind the towering electric fence found on Jurassic park. ‘Oogie Boogie’ pulls a similar trick although the drier-than-thou riff recalls the short-lived and thoroughly excellent Garcia project Slo Burn as much as anything else.
With two thirds of the album lost in a haze of smoke and patchouli oil the final third heads off briefly in a more rock ‘n’ roll direction with the fiddly guitar work of ‘drive in burger’ which sounds suspiciously like The Hives being molested by Rocket from the crypt in a dirty alleyway…which is nice. ‘From 66 to 51’ opens with a none-more-QOTSA riff set to the sort of sample Rob Zombie loves to include in every track making this possibly the world’s first horror-stoner track and the result, despite bearing all the hallmarks of the Homme is indisputably heavier than that gentleman has put his name to since departing the ranks of Kyuss. ‘Under the sun of Mexico’ is equally heavy and sounds a little bit like the result of apile up between Monster Magnet, Guns ‘n’ Roses and Soundgarden in Las Vegas car park thanks to the sheer muscle applied to the speedy riffs and insane drumming. The final track, ‘somewhere else to drive’ closes things on an acoustic bent that wouldn’t be out of place sung around a camp fire with the sun sinking below the horizon and the amps all laid to rest in a smoking pile in the background and it’s the perfect outro to an excellent album that offers a variety of styles and sounds over the course of its hour-long run time.
Drawing from a wide sonic template, Los Disidentes Del Sucio Motel are the sort of band that you want to hate simply because of the ease with which they churn out riffs of awesome power. However, no matter how hard you may try to dislike the band the one inescapable fact is that they are awesome. Powerful, passionate and exciting, even if they do occasionally draw from the well of Homme a little too liberally, the biggest attraction to Los Disidentes is their clear and overriding passion for the music that they make and the undisputed skill with which they make it. This is a fantastic stoner/hard rock opus that will bring a smile to the face of any hard rock fan and the band have imbued the whole thing with a timeless quality that will undoubtedly see you still blasting out this excellent record in a year, or even ten years, time. Los Disidentes rock – that’s all you really need to know… now go get this album!
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