Formed in 2016, The Outlaw Orchestra hail from Southampton (so, they’re southern in a sense), and deliver full-bore country rock with plenty of attitude. This three track EP, ‘the devil made me do it’, is positively svelte, the band dispatching three tunes in under ten-minutes, but its strength lies in quality over quantity and the songs’ brevity works in their favour, the band clearly aiming to get that dance floor seething – something which all three tracks are all but guaranteed to achieve.
Listening to the finger-licking intro to ‘see you in hell’, the inevitable comparison is Pride and Glory’s ‘losin’ your mind’ which offers up a similar juxtaposition between country-fried banjo and more straight-forward hard rock. David Roux certainly has the whiskey-soured tones down to a T, whilst the addition of Stephen Welch on banjo is an inspired move that adds a level of southern authenticity to the band that most other, similarly-themed, acts lack. It’s a cracking start to the EP and it’s easy to imagine the band proving as adept in kick-starting a barn dance as a mosh-pit. Ryan Smith’s thunderous percussion positively launches the stabbing guitar of ‘laughing all the way to the gallows’, a track that sounds like Freddie King being brutalised by Led Zeppelin and Lynyrd Skynyrd in a bar. Loud, raucous and best played at a volume that threatens to split your skull wide open, the song blazes away in under three minutes before giving way to the whimsical ‘back to Georgia’, another sub-three-minute blast of Southern charm wrapped up in an intoxicating layer of Southern Comfort and driven by an unapologetically-battered cowbell. Throughout there’s a lively feeling and if you don’t reach the conclusion with a huge grin plastered across your features, you’re doing it wrong.
Toe-tapping, whiskey-soaked country rock with an emphasis on the rock, ‘the devil made me do it’ is a blistering example of a band firing on all cylinders and what it lacks in duration, it more than makes up for in memorable choruses, heavy-ass riffs and southern swagger. Pretty awesome, check it out! 9
Find out more (including current live listings) via the band’s Facebook Page.
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