The Deadly Snakes
Porcella

LA RECENSIONE

The rural tradition teaches me that nothing is wasted from the pig. An ancient saying born from millennia of experience, absolutely true to reality. The pig is dirty and seems ugly and bad. Rockers are also dirty and seem ugly and bad. When, in the morning, they gargle with Jack Daniels and smoke a nice cigar while wearing leather, they effectively stop "seeming" ugly and bad and start "becoming" ugly and bad.
But in the end, the pig is a friendly animal with a hearty appetite, it eats everything, gains weight, and makes you happy. These damn rockers are extremely likeable: Canadians (and already here the quality control green seal kicks in) released in September 2005, we were supposed to kill them in December, but there wasn't time...
The entire album is soaked in a dark and lysergic atmosphere, the tracks are pop in the sense that they are immediately accessible, never problematic, but rich, varied, and punchy. It's truly a strange mixture that the band offers, which is absolutely characterful and talented. So much so that the sound is truly personal, even though it is composed of many recognizable elements.
Throughout the album, there is a soul spirit present, with horns and organ that know how to find the way to create always compelling tracks, with never predictable developments. Influenced equally by sixties music, soul, rhythm'n'blues, country, and garage rock, they know how to cleverly mix these ingredients to create lively and vital material, even though the lyrics are not always light.

The album opens with a "Debt Collection" that pays homage to the Doors' "Roadhouse Blues", but with a soul twist, featuring a long organ ride. In the following "200 Nautical Miles", the strings build a nervous atmosphere of anticipation, very tense, but it is swept away by "Sissy Blues", where it's as if the Stooges had learned to play instruments and make a brass arrangement. "High Prices Going Down" is an extremely acid ballad sustained entirely by the bass, with beautiful mellotron parts.
And thus we arrive at the most interesting pieces of the whole album: "Gore Veil" is absolutely catchy with that chant-like progression supported by a little organ. You won't be able to resist tapping your foot and whistling the melody. The next track, "So Young & So Cruel" is another unmissable soul track with a foundation of leather boots, immediately bringing images of ghost towns surrounded by burning deserts.

It would be useless to continue with a track-by-track review, since we're talking about a pig, there's really so much good stuff, we couldn't throw anything away. Definitely above average, but undoubtedly very peculiar to appeal to a wide audience.
If I were to find a group with affinities to The Deadly Snakes, I would mention The Coral, even though I consider ours to be better (because of the morning gargle with Jack Daniels, of course). It seems that the group disbanded after this album (see PitchforkMedia.com).