Yes you really did read that band name right and with it bang goes our sites well maintained Universal suitable for all rating. Yes of course I am not being entirely serious and as you may have guessed nor are these four portly dudes (actually one of them looks like they might be skinny) from Las Vegas. The place is such a hotbed of iniquity, city of vice, place of prince’s ginger genitalia flashing and for those of you who sat through Hostel III a whole lot more. Once you get past the BBW delight gracing the cover of this album and look inside you have what looks like Jesus smoking something blunt and a match being flicked at a church; said ministry is nicely aflame on the back cover. This could be the greatest Norwegian Black Metal tribute from Las Vegas ever! Then again maybe not but how the feck would you actually describe the music?
Well I could throw lots of descriptions around. It’s retro sounding hepped up rock for cool cats and has a gonzo avant skronk feel behind its hipster threads. Their Facebook page gives a bit more detail and helpfully tells me that “the fat dukes of fuck are from Las Vegas Nevada. They play music.” It also mentions that the players are known as Ice Pube, professor horse exhaust, the shit wizard and crib death so perhaps they are looking on getting down with the local gangbangers too. Honestly the vision I have of them is of four guys looking like Fat Freddie and making a stoned out noise with all the qualities of a bumbling waster on the hunt for munchies whilst his feline friend lays a giant turdball in his headphones. Joking aside though behind the sense of humour and wrongness of all this, these dudes can play.
The songs are catchy, annoyingly so. We start off with ‘The Mighty Bulge’ and a Beavis And Butthead like chorus repeating “look at my bulge” over and over again and inviting us to feel it. Musically it is like a collision of Tenacious D and Frank Z. It’s very much the sound of Down Town Traffic with some full on metallic guitar riffing. You can imagine a pimp cruising along and indeed singing the lyrics to this in his daddy o caddy and then being forced into uncontrollable fits of head banging and ruining his fro damn image of coolness. ‘Sorry About Your Dick’ sounds like a cock punch up between members of the Red Hot Chilli Peppers and GWAR, yep seriously it grooves and gets messy and also lays down some funking striding grooves. You could cite everything from Hendrix to Nugent, to Funkadelic on songs like ‘Oral Fixation.’ Its obvious where the roots of this glans are stemming from and it’s a time when Linda Lovelace reigned supreme ‘Step Aside And Let That Fucker Dance’ is suitably attired, (well clothing wise) it’s all about the fashion of the disco fever; polyester, wingtips and all manner of horrendous get ups and cutting a rug to them.
The most annoying song and boy that is a hard one is probably ‘Cigarette.’ These fat dudes really do get things lodged in your head and this is subliminally (no actually blatantly) making me want to dash out and buy a packet of 20. In fact if they cost what they did around the time I would go and buy a few dozen cartons. Probably my favourite number is ‘Let My people Grow. It’s an upbeat fusion of funky gospel metal, if that makes any sort of sense. It’s the tribes of The Warriors getting together and uniting in harmony (can you dig it) before it goes pear shaped with the chattering machine gun fire of the militant guitar riffs. As for the final title track it really is kind of classy and sounds like a Swedish retro doom band discovering Deep Purple and The Gentleman’s Pistols and trying to mix them all together. Luckily they succeed admirably even if they do rhyme Will Smith with Eat A Crisp!
This was a different album for me to review and listen to; most enjoyable it has been too. How the hell they are unsigned is beyond me. A great album for getting your freak on to!
(7.5/10 Pete Woods)
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