This is an addendum to the review of the Point Blank self titled first album. Second Season is just another heapin' helping of hearty down home heavy bluesified southern rock , still very much in the ZZ Top vein. An edgier, brighter mix for this one, but otherwise the winning formula remains the same.
Uncle Ned, Tatooed Lady, and Nasty Notions are the hardest rockers(solidly in the territory of the heaviest ZZ Top) of the bunch and they probably should have opened the album with them. These 3 are packed with solid riffage from front to back. Uncle Ned breaks into a wicked double time section with a mean proto-metal guitar breakdown leading to wicked trading of Les Paul theatrics by Rusty Burns and Kim Davis. Tatooed Lady rolls along like beer drinkin' hell raiser looking for love, again with solos from both guitar slingers. Nasty Notions is a funky struttin' song with more twin lead action.
Rock and Roll Hideaway is a little on the happier boogie side of things, but still manages to rock. Not as heavy on the killer riffage though. Part Time Lover and Back in the Alley are both really cool, groovy minor blues tunes. More in the straight ahead blues category, but very cool with sweet soloing on both.
The 2 songs I usually skip are Stars and Scars and Beautiful Loser, which are both basically country songs. Not necessary parts of the album as far as I'm concerned. The album closer is Waiting for a Change, which is a melancholy minor key southern rock ballad.
Lose the couple of not-so-cool songs, and combine this with the first Point Blank album and you've got 70+ minutes of top notch southern rock that is heavier and contains more long-haired loud rockin' than most Skynyrd or Molly Hatchet and definitely lays waste to the likes of the Outlaws or .38 Special.
Granted by '76 and '77 some hard rock norms had been established, but aside from the first few ZZ Top records, southern rock, musically, often didn't live up to the biker and skull image that it had/has. Point Blank managed to deliver on that promise of darker, heavier, southern fried 70's metal. It's really surprising that they weren't a lot bigger.
Riff Density 7
Riff Caliber 10
Post Blues Factor 8
Groove Factor 9
Dig It 10
2 comments:
Can't believe I've never heard of these guys. Loved the first song on your Transmission the best; I believe you said that was from the s/t.
Gonna have to pick these up.
This band might have had more hits if their scheduled world tour with Lynyrd Skynyrd had started as planned two days after the Skynyrd plane crash. The tour was in support of their second album, and they ended up playing a thrown together bunch of shows rather than playing big shows. Also from 1977 through 1983 they were the most booked band in the world, playing as many as 307 shows a year. They released albums The hard way, and volume 9 in 2008 and 2013 and both are excellent.
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