Search - Immortal Lee County Killers :: These Bones Will Rise to Love You

New Label, New Member, New Sound, New Result.

Justin S. Lukenbill | 05/12/2006

(3 out of 5 stars)

"The Immortal Lee County Killers are blues revivalists. But let me make something perfectly clear here - there seem to be three kinds of blues revivalists in this country:



#1- SRV rip-offs who tout the greatness of Hendrix but REFUSE to play with any distortion. Every major American city is bound to have at least a few of these Jesse James-hat, Voodoo Child Slight Return-covering uncreative morons who's one re-acurring accomplishment from gig to gig is to give insane drunks the illusion that they have seen the Texas Tornado in the flesh.



#2- Respectable traditionalists who KNOW the roots of the music (i.e. American Negro work songs) but still opt-out for all the too-usual blues covers, I'm thinking Muddy Waters' version of "I'm A King Bee". While this is all fine and commendable, the evolution of the musical envelope is, well, sitting flat and collecting dust on the traditionalist bluesman's desktop.



#3- The blues 'benders and breakers'. These musicians, like the traditionalists, KNOW the roots and build straight from the source. These are the kind of artists who lay down an obvious blues foundation and seek to create something new and interesting.



Alabama's Immortal Lee County Killers (ILKC)is of the 3rd group of blues revivalists. I saw these guys live on a whim and never looked back toward the entrance door. I ate up their albums and saw them for a second time a month later in another city.



Singer/guitarist Chet Wisely is a down-to-earth man just trying to get his band's music heard. While the other ILCK albums retain a much more raw, gritty, punk-blues feel. This album focuses mostly on classic blues rock and sees the light of actual production values... which may or may not be a good thing.



The good thing w/ better production (and a new record label) is that it could have given ILCK a chance to be heard on the more mainstream levels of indie rock. The bad thing is that this album's ambience reminds me all too much of Nebula's 2003 "Atomic Ritual" release - in which that album's ambience is similar to Deep Purple's 1972 "Machine Head" release. Not a big deal though, if Nebula has learned something, it is to steal from something that was at least good (and in which I am indirectly saying that Nebula's "Atomic Ritual" is good if you didn't catch on). But no harm no foul, Nebula's Eddie Glass has even played "Sympathy For The Devil" w/ ILCK on stage that turned into a rare vinyl single, although the sound qaulity is about as good as a tongue being dragged across a sheet of sand paper.



ILKC didn't get much recogintion from the release of this album, even after moving to TEE PEE Records and smartly adding an organist to the one-time guitar/vocals and drums line up.



If your new to ILKC, start with their "Love Is A Charm" album. It burns a blues/punk trail in the overgrown forest of rotten blues standards."