Right now I'm sitting in my small studio apartment in Brussels, listening to Les Vice Barons and drinking ice-cold strong Belgian beer (Delirium Tremens, since you ask - yes, the one with pink elephants on the bottle). The weather outside is very atypical of Brussels and can only be described with the Greek word κουφόβραση, which the always reliable (lol) google translate explains as: humid heat or sultriness. Somehow I think these words can also be applied to the music at hand. Les (or sometimes The) Vice Barons are fellow Bruxellois and are probably also steaming right now, a few blocks from here. The sixties esthetic, gun and femme fatale on the cover are indicative of the music within, instrumentals in thrall to the surf music of Davie Allan and 60's crime thrillers as scored by the likes of John Barry. The album is really good, if you like instrumental surf music. For me, a whole album of it is probably a bit too much. I certainly enjoyed the opener "Surfsploitation", a fast piece with tremolo guitar right out of the Pulp Fiction movie. In retrospect, half the album is variations on the same theme, but I think the first one is the best. "Like Weird" is a mid-tempo spy movie theme with the organ in the forefront while "Shaft In Matongue" combines funky wah wah guitar with surf music sax and guitars. Kudos for originality, boys! "Timebomb" is a classic instrumental and the band nails it. One of my favorite features of this band is their use of the keyboards. Here, like in most of the album, the organist plays the guitarist's sidekick (The Robin to his Batman) but he does a great job at it. "No Way To Behave" is the only vocal track, a country/soul ballad and "9.10" a fast instrumental with oriental and spacey effects."Big Head", "Fuel Injection", "Hangover Special" and "Unabomber" are likewise fast-paced surf instrumentals. Taken one at a time, they're enjoyable but all at once they become rather tiresome. "Werwolf" is a slow surf song and the album closes with John Barry's theme for classic TV series "The Persuaders".
**** for Surfsploitation, Timebomb
*** for Like Weird, Shaft In Matongue, 9.10, Big Head, Hangover Special, The Persuaders
** for No Way To Behave, Fuel Injection, Werwolf, Unabomber
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