Stomping riffs and catchy hooks erupt from every seam and some well-placed guitar breaks help. The album may have been recorded by a duo, but it sounds and feels like the product of a well-oiled machine firing on all cylinders. The good news is that these songs are well written and well played. Tombstone Highway doesn’t try to establish a unique identity – instead they are happy to churn out songs that sound like any number of other bands. ‘Graveyard Blues’ hits the ground with a riff that is pretty reminiscent of ‘War Machine’ by KISS and it strikes me that this is the problem with a lot of bands that try to occupy this hard rocking, stoner-friendly, groovy/heavy space: the sheer number of entrants in the subgenre mean that it takes a lot to forge a unique style out of these widespread influences. Such deliverance not being on the cards, the next track, ‘Acid Overlord’ kicks in with familiar stoner grooves, laced with pinch harmonics that remind me of Black Label Society. The banjo obligato on the opening track, ‘Old Blood’ is a nice touch, although it doesn’t really go anywhere – I would have loved to hear an electric guitar/banjo duel.
The songs here are tight, furious and delivered with conviction. This doesn’t mean that their hard-rocking mix of bluesy hard rock, stoner metal and shades of Americana is in any way inauthentic or sub-par. The old Italian cowboy movies usually drafted an American star to helm the cast, but Tombstone Highway rely entirely on their own homegrown skills, and those of a few special guests from the Italian scene. This is the sonic equivalent of a Spaghetti Western – a production that is steeped in American idioms, but actually emerges from Italy. Review in Haiku – ‘The sonic equivalent of a Spaghetti Western’ Today we have reviewer Jayaprakash Satyamurthy reviewing the album ‘ Ruralizer‘ from the band Tombstone Highway.
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