DIRTY CROWS - Got No Chance Against Rock'n'Roll

11 songs
37:13 minutes
***** ****
(self released)

Bandpage

I have to confess that it took me quite some time to finally get around to Dirty Crows, a new desert rock band from the North of Luxembourg. Call it geographical bias from a dedicated Southerner. But a few weeks ago, I decided to check out their official video clip on YouTube and was positively surprised by the quality of their music. Only a short time later, I was coincidentally forwarded a copy of their album and it was obvious that I had to spend a lot of my time with it soon thereafter.

Back in the old days, most Luxembourgish bands came from the South and the central regions, but lately bands like The Disliked and Inborn have shown that cool sounds can also come from more provincial territories. I don’t know much more about Dirty Crows than the few bits their press sheet reveals, but in the ends we just have to let the music do the talking, and what a bit of talking it does. Their debut album Got No Chance Against Rock’n’Roll comes with ten songs and an intro, and doesn’t even make it to forty minutes, but in that short time the four rockers manage to get their statement across.

Beginning with the ominous thirty second intro Cold Fiction, the band immediately shows itself from their best side on The Kalashnikov Blues, an unexpectedly wild start that instantly sets the pace. Dirty Crows are definitely not a band on the lookout for technically skilled music, instead they play their rock’n’roll pure and loud! The drums have this kind of primitive pounding technique that one hasn’t heard since the late gentlemen John Bonham and Keith Moon, while even the bass guitar is able to grab a leading role with its upfront distorted sound. The guitars are of course as dirty as the genre demands, and above all you get the supreme vocals by Marc Bonert. It’s been too often that aspiring artists often lack the vocal reach to make the material work, but in the case of Dirty Crows, everything just comes together perfectly, also thanks to the great production (the album was recorded in Munich, by the way) which highlights all of the musicians’ virtues. So this is very primitive music, but the kind of primitive that works splendidly well, as the band knows how to combine good songwriting with a passionate performance.

This is followed by the band’s single Eat It Baby!, another catchy desert rocker full of grime. A Vicious Dog With No Teeth is, despite its short length, a song which uses cleaner vocals to a good result, and it’s not surprise that Dirty Crows name Kyuss, Queens Of The Stone Age and Nirvana among their influences. So yes, they are consequently not the most original band on the planet, but let’s face it: it’s never been their goal to reinvent music. Instead they set out to utterly destroy with their music, and they are better at this than their short band history should actually allow. The title track is another primal piece of raw rock music, coming with a proto punk sound that even somehow recalls the Stooges.

I am not going into further details here. Suffice it to say that the album continues in the same vein, with heavier tracks and brooder material nicely keeping the balance. The concluding Mean Thing ends after four and a half minutes and then segues into another two minutes of darkly melancholic piano playing, which is probably to allow the listener to get their breath back.

Got No Chance Against Rock’n’Roll is the most refreshing album I have heard from a Luxembourgish band in a very long time. Like I wrote before, Dirty Crows sound already more mature and experienced than they have any reason to, but don’t we prefer that to a reversed situation. Friends of authentically done rock music will be happy to know that rock’n’roll isn’t dead yet in Luxembourg.