Album Details

• Artist: Buck Satan And The 666 Shooters
• Album: Bikers Welcome Ladies Drink Free
• Label: 2012
• Year of Release: AFM
• ME Rating:
• Reviewed by: solitaryman on 2012-01-29

A project many years in the making, brought about by an epiphany brought about by (another) near-death experience, Ministry and Revolting Cocks mastermind Al Jourgensen brings us Buck Satan And The 666 Shooters, a psycho-country bunch of booze-swilling, geetar-wranglin' badasses. A labor of love as much as anything, Bikers Welcome Ladies Drink Free is a tribute to some of Al's favorite music, the sort of swaggering, posturing cowboy country we've not heard much of lately but lives on historically from the likes of Gram Parsons, Johnny Cash and many others in between. Bikers Welcome is a tribute and a damn good time.

With a band rounded out by members or ex-members of Ministry, Cheap Trick and Static X, Buck Satan and his shooters kick things off in an alcoholic haze on "Quicker Than Liquor". Many guest musicians make their presense felt from track to track, filling in that old-school country sound with the appropriate instruments and atmosphere. The tracks vary from the overly ambitious and energenic (What's Wrong With Me, Drug Store Truck Drivin' Man) to the more straightforward and equally powerful (Medication Nation, Cheap Wine, Cheap Ramen). Songs like "The Only Time I'm Sober Is When You're Gone" and "I Hate Every Bone In Your Body (Except Mine)" are a nostalgic nod to some of the older "Take my wife...please!" style of country blues. "Sleepless Nights and Bar Room Fights" is a big meaty punch to the face, full of piss and tempo. "Friend of the Devil" is incredibly infectious and "Ten Long Years In Texas" has a bit more of a modernized feel to it. Closer "Take Me Away" seems like the most serious the album dares to get, a somber yet ill-fitting farewell in context to the upbeat shenanigans of the first 11 tracks. However, it seems to work wonderfully in Al's plan to combine elements of a genre's entire history into an album's worth of Jourgensen'ed C&W.

What little there is to complain about is simply nit-picking, but the need to constantly announce each guitar solo by name "Go get 'em Mikey, Mr. Mike Scaccia on guitar, etc" does stick out a bit as a slight annoyance. I do understand this is a part of how records used to sound, however, and can appreciate it being a more fleshed-out piece of Americana nostalgia because of it. Beyond that, you'll get nothing but 50 minutes of full-out, fornication and fucking around on Bikers Welcome Ladies Drink Free, a refreshing moment of something we just don't hear much of anymore. However off-kilter and blatantly off-the-rails Al Jourgensen may be, the carefully constructed nature of this record belies a dedication and respect for a sound that may be long dead but lives on in many a fan.

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