Brown Brigade
Into The Mouth Of Badd(d)ness

“As a guitarist, I used to practice by playing the entire album “Symbolic” by Death. You know what I mean, right?”

With this question, Dave “Brownsound” Baksh dismissed the journalists who were asking him why he left Sum 41. Well, Dave Baksh, a declared heavy metal lover, decided to leave the famous punk-pop band - Sum 41 indeed - of which his childhood friends are a part, and with whom he became famous, to play the music he truly loved, to pursue his real dream. Brownsound thus found the guts to leave a band that, for better or worse, sold 3-4 million records, to start from scratch: going back to selling demos at concerts and seeking record deals which, if he hadn’t had the courage to pursue his true aspiration, he would have obtained easily, and quite lucratively too. His decision to transition from a genre with easy appeal and catchiness among millions of teenagers like punk-pop à la Sum 41 to a less profitable but more personal genre like heavy metal deserves praise, and quite a bit of it.

The result of this new musical direction is the founding of the Brown Brigade, consisting of Dave Baksh himself and his cousin Vaughn Lal, a funky school bassist with a decent technical background, the only steady members. The band in question offers classic heavy metal but mixed during live shows with Caribbean reggae rhythms, thanks to percussionists hired solely for live performances, typical of the homeland of the two cousins, Guyana. And, in turn, the first product of these Brown Brigade is this “In the Mouth of Badd(d)ness”, which I am about to examine because here in Italy it is (almost) not known at all (strange…).

In this first LP of his new band, Dave Baksh unleashes all the creativity that was repressed during the time spent with Sum 41 and gives birth to a significant amount of engaging riffs, some in pure Iron Maiden style, others more “thrash-like”. But that’s not all. In fact, the album features two songs, “Aggravation Plantation” and “Fear of a Brown Planet”, with a more '70s flavor, more hard rock, and two, “Down with Brown” and “Last Writes”, that showcase the funky influence of one of the two members in particular. Of note is the cover of “Hallowed Be Thy Name”, which testifies to the importance of the Maiden influence. This “In the Mouth of Badd(d)ness” flows in a succession of songs with a fairly high average quality that doesn’t allow the listener to get bored; among all stand out particularly “Blame the Wizards”, “Purebread”, the title-track, and “WD-80”.

In conclusion, truly a good debut album, which disproves everyone who thought of Dave Baksh, as “the loser from Sum 41 who wants to play the metalhead”. Many compliments to Dave Brownsound Baksh.