Bob City

It's a rare treat when a band can inject riff after riff with unbridled psychotic power and agitation. It's even rarer when the band can match that fury with songs and vocals that sound as hoarse and anxious as the noise that surrounds them. Like its sonic brethren the Supersuckers and Mötorhead, Columbus's Bob City claws through rock and roll at a furious pace and builds its noise on a set of hyperangular meta-rock slabs that exceed its whip-smart fury through the intimidating, gargantuan, Nugent-esque guitar worship that permeates this disc. But it's in the jacked-up boogie of these songs that Bob City truly brings us back to the wicked '70s inference that guitar is God. Bob City fuels its songs with an endless groove and takes the edge off of its assault with a sort of lyrical lunkheaded stonerness that is downright embraceable.

Blending Kiss-like arena pomp with gritty street punkishness and attacking every single note like a terrific beer party/barroom boogie band isn't quite the stuff of musical artistry, but Bob City is certainly a kick-ass six-pack party-to-go. Unquestionably, there's nothing new here. The vocals are yowled in a typically gruff fashion, the amps are jacked up to 10, and the entire disc comes off as some sort of subtle-as-a-sledgehammer tribute to the songs these guys used to get stoned to while cruising around in a beat-up primer-gray Camaro. Bob City without fail takes its cues from the music it admires, but it tends to transcend the obvious mundane reworkings by giving the past a firm, square kick in the ass.