Hell City Kings, The Wolf EP / The Road to Damnation

So I’ve kind of gone about this bass-ackwards, to be up-front about it, but honestly, I’m now thinking maybe that wasn’t such a bad thing. You see, I got a hold of a copy of the Hell City Kings’ 2009 LP, The Road to Damnation, a month or so ago, but it languished on the floor next to my desk until I got sent a copy of the band’s new EP, The Wolf, released this month.

I put on the latter, curious to hear the band for the first time in some form other than their Myspage page, and hot damn, was it good. Nicely raw, satisfying sleazy rawk songs about booze, wimmen, rockin’ the fuck out, murder, partying, and breaking shit, all played by a bunch of tattooed, chain-smoking guys who look like they’d kick your teeth in as soon as talk to you; how can you not like that? The music’s awesomely thick and meaty, while the guitars slash and gouge out chunks with each garage-y riff and the rhythm section thunders along. It’s not headphone music, admittedly, but that’s not really what it’s meant for, I don’t think — instead, this is music to crank insanely loud, preferably on busted-up speakers littered with cigarette burns and weird, how’d-that-happen? holes punched in the sides.

Musically, The Wolf dwells in the same garage-punk ghetto as fellow Houstonians (with whom the band shares at least one member) Born Liars, but they blend in more of an old-school punk ethos, funneling in a fair dose of the Ramones and street-punks like Roger Miret and the Disasters; hell, they even come near to Black Flag territory every once in a while (see fuck-you anthem “Neighbors”), and when I hear “The Rivers Edge,” I can’t help think of Black Cat Music’s classic “Hands in the Estuary, Torso in the Lake.” It’s furious, rough-edged rock that makes no apologies for living fast and hard, and it’s great for that.

Now, having heard the EP, I went back and listened to the LP, putting on The Road to Damnation for the first time, and…well, it’s just not the same. The sound’s actually better than it is on the EP, but that may kind of work against the band, making their scrappy, facepunching tunes sound too damn clean and polished when they should sound scratched-up and messy.

Beyond that, though, it’s the lyrics that really give me pause. It kills me to say it, but about half the time, the Kings’ lyrics on the full-length are clichéd to the point of inanity. I started cringing about halfway through the lead-in title track, and that’s not a good sign. Things got better for a while, with the darn good “If Tomorrow Never Comes” (not the Garth Brooks song, thankfully) and the sinister, Steel Pole Bathtub-ish guitar line the band throws in towards the end, and followup track “Gone And Forgotten” ain’t bad, either.

“Silver Bullet,” though, hits a new low — it’s a sleazy, grimy punk rock song about, yes, werewolves. “Scumbags And Scallywags” doesn’t help matters any, with its nautical theme and sailor jargon; I’ll give it to the Kings that the chorus is pretty catchy, in spite of itself, but it’s hard to take the band seriously when they’re singing about Davy Jones’ locker and “salty dogs.” Wow. Then there’s “Rock N Roll Outlaw Rides Again,” which puts the band in Western gear and fantasizes about robbing banks, Jesse James-style, and I’m left shaking my head and wondering if these guys are just screwing around.

It’s telling that the best songs on Damnation either sound like the stuff on The Wolf or are the same songs as on the EP — “Never Let Go,” the awesomely head-snapping first track from the EP, is easily the best song on here, followed by bitterly angry breakup song “Another Lesson Learned.” My advice? Keep going the way you seem to be headed with The Wolf, guys, and don’t get sidetracked by the weird storylines and all that shit. Leave out the werewolves, the outlaws, and the pirate songs, and you’re golden.