Boneshaker-s/t

self-produced

Not to be confused with Wisconsin based metal trio Bone Shaker, this particular band hails from France and play a rather straight, bare knuckle style of hard rock. The first thing I noticed here was of course how much the vocals sound like Bon Scott. Although AC/DC may be an influence on the music as well, I think they do an admirable job of establishing their own style despite the obvious vocal similarities to Bon Scott. The music is wired up and often fairly fast as they play like they have something to prove and a fire in their bellies. On their four original tracks they don't often give you much time to think as they kick in the doors and just stomp forward. It's heavy, it rocks and they know how to take charge of the pace and keep everything bouncing and grooving along with enough twists to keep it sounding fresh. This is a slightly odd album in that it has four originals and then three AC/DC covers, naturally all from the Bon Scott era. So they tackle "High Voltage", "Sin City" and "Shot down in flames" as their trio of choice. Their versions are faithful to the originals and good enough, but I didn't get a sense that they put enough of themselves into these songs. That's kind of a shame because the four studio tracks did enough to show me that they had their own sound, but they didn't apply it much to the cover versions and doing a different take on a cover is what to me makes it worth doing. Still a very decent album as they rattled out some strong hard rock with a real sense of confidence and a great deal of grit.

http://www.myspace.com/boneshaker64