Rose Tattoo
Pain
SPV
So I wanted to hear something by the guys that Guns N’ Roses, as I understand, took a lot of inspiration from. Well, shit, Axl and the gang did cover “Nice Boys” – fun stuff. But it’s been over fifteen years, the first new material in a decade-and-a-half. Can five tattoo-covered Australian roughnecks still hack that rock and roll game? Yeah, not bad at all.
It sounds like – and to be fair, Rose Tattoo more often than not come out on the winning side of the chicken/egg equation – Bon Scott AC/DC, Guns N’ Roses circa Appetite, Masters Of Reality, and, fuck, I’ll say Motorhead too. Like Lemmy’s gang, Rose Tattoo have an instantly recognizable frontman, Angry Anderson, a too fast to live ethos (but have come out the other side, like Motorhead), and they have the same singleminded devotion to the simplest of true rock and roll aesthic, loudfastrules.
Rose Tattoo would obviously beat me up if they ever came near me. The songs are totally blue-collar, working-mans’ pub rock. And songs like “Union Man,” “One More Drink,” “Outside My Means,” “17 Stitches,” and “Hard Rockin’ Man” drive the point home with jackhammer efficiency. Just by listening to the record I was already all like, “Yes sir, my hair does make me look like a girl! No, sir, I didn’t mean to bump into you and spill your drink. Don’t kill me!”
The cool thing about a band like Rose Tattoo is that they pound out a very simple and basic beer rock sound – which never dates, and ages very gracefully. Cross-generational headbanging. It’s some Chuck Berry meets the Sphinx eternal soundz. Trends will crumble to dust around them, as they continue to play brutal two-chord boogie in a hellhole bar. They’ll be able to do this cool shit well into their ’90s!
The good news, for those with their Australian rock scorecards handy, is that they’re better than The Vines.
SPV Records: http://www.spv.de
