Album review: EAT THE GUN – Howlinwood

EAT THE GUN - Howlinwood

SPV www.spv.de [Release date 28.08.15]

Who doesn’t love a good threesome ? German threesomes are even better – allegedly!  Right from the almost QOTSA staccato-riff opening to title track “Howlinwood” (cool video too), I thought “’Allo, what have we here?”

Well, it turns out we have a spanking little gem from Munster, Germany with Eat The Gun’s fifth album “Howlinwood”. The pace is well and truly set with the first and second track one-two sucker punch as “Fallin’” continues the in-yer-face assault and puts a stake firmly in the ground. Power-pop is perhaps an over-used phrase but a loud and brash hook is much the same thing and Eat

The Gun have the back pockets of their lederhosen stuffed full of them.  A brief listen to previous recordings (“Wake Me Up” and “Loner”) suggests that Eat The Gun have been honing their talent for writing big choruses over punk-driven riffs for some time and “Take It Away” sounds like that experience and endeavour is culminating nicely on this album.

“Electric Life” is a proper foot-stomper a la Foo Fighters and keeps the momentum going nicely. There is a real meat and potatoes feel to this album – tight, punk-edgy and very powerful stuff.

Having already played support to such acts as Die Toten Hosen, HIM, Danko Jones, Duff McKagan and The Backyard Babies, Eat The Gun can surely expect to be called into duty with bigger and better support slots on the evidence of this strong showing.

As I keep harping on about in other reviews, the art of song-writing is critical to differentiating one’s band from the competitive noise out there and Eat The Gun demonstrate throughout this album that they clearly have that knack.

Tidy, compact riffing pumps through the veins of Howlinwood with “The Drudge” tipping the hat (intentionally or not) to Social Distortion and album closer “Anger” shows they have some balladry about them too.

Absolutely no filler on this album – the good folks at GRTR! are very impressed… ****

Review by Mark “Mad Dog” Shaw


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