Winnebago Deal
Flight Of The Raven

They come from England (Oxford), are a duo (just guitar and drums), and are both named Ben. If you're thinking of a White Stripes clone, however, you're on the wrong track. Because it only takes one listen to realize that the similarities between the two bands stop at the number of members. Started as a quartet in '99 (but the other two founding members left shortly after), they have been engaging in a hard and noisy music from the start, inspired, among others, by bands like Fu Manchu and Queens Of The Stone Age, but also by the Seattle sound (especially that of the Sub Pop stable) and its rawest exponents like Tad and Mudhoney. Distinctly American influences, already evident in the name chosen by the group (taken from a Wisconsin Indian tribe, but apparently also a beer brand), which indeed admits to being rather foreign to the British music scene. The classic grinding journey of hundreds of concerts around the country (even alongside bands of the caliber of Fugazi, Nebula, and Therapy?) led them to sign a contract with the independent Fierce Panda, which released their first album in 2004, "Dead Gone", preceded in 2003 by a couple of promising EPs. Simultaneously, Nick Olivieri, their enthusiastic fan (for whom they had already opened several concerts), proposed that they join his Mondo Generator as full members and, in fact, absorbed them into his band, taking them on tour with him in America and Europe. 

"Flight Of The Raven" is their second album and, like the previous one, benefits from the production of grunge guru Jack Endino, who recorded it in just two weeks at his studio in Seattle. The 15 tracks it consists of offer a hybrid style that mixes the power of metal and the fury of punk, along with a bit of healthy stoner heaviness. While there are plenty of garage punk-style songs (like "You Let Me Down", "Targets", and "The Maniac"), there are also episodes more closely related to stoner, where the rhythm slows down and the atmosphere becomes heavier: the menacing "Venomized", or "The Button", or the long "Going Home", with its 7 minutes and more of unstoppable sonic mayhem, which starts as a normal song and degenerates into a sort of jam session (this time enriched by bass, theremin inserts, and piano). Among the catchiest tracks, it's worth mentioning "Spider Bite" and "Reeper", not coincidentally both chosen as singles, which do not shy away from an appealing chorus (present, for that matter, in many of their compositions). The title track features Endino himself (who, as is known, in addition to being a producer was also a guitarist for Skin Yard, true forerunners of grunge), to which he adds a beautiful slide guitar. In "Czechoslovakia" there's also the touch of Nick Olivieri (where he plays guitar and sings the final verse), whom we also find on vocals in the incendiary bonus track "Revenge" (a cover of Black Flag from the pre-Rollins period), which closes the album with a punk flair.

In short, an album of wild rock'n'roll, dominated by invariably distorted guitars, a hard-hitting drum, and a voice naturally inclined to raucous shouting. Listening to them, it's natural to draw parallels, in some respects, to Motorhead, to that kind of proverbially fast and violent metal. But perhaps the words that best fit to describe their sound, they came up with themselves: "Fu Manchu and Black Flag conspiring to assassinate the White Stripes".