Hailing from Nashville,
American Bang are clearly aspiring lifers steeped in tradition but they’re hardly part of the Music City Mafia. No country stars they: they’re styled as blue-collar, middle-American hard rockers, at least when the tempos are revved up and they’re doing the “Whiskey Walk.” When things slow down - and not even all the way down to a ballad, just enough for a mid-tempo wannabe anthem -- it becomes clear that they’re the first of what is likely to be many attempts to ride the coattails of
Kings of Leon, substituting earthbound barroom rock for
KOL’s Americana pretensions and
U2 aspirations. Thanks to veteran producer
Bob Rock, the group is slickly effective - he provides a brick wall of sound that almost camouflages
Jaren Johnston’s affected drawl, he gives those echoey arena-fillers definition -- but the band sounds most believable at its sleaziest and stupidest, knocking out “Hurt Like Hell,” the slow blues strut “Wouldn’t Want To Be You” and that absurd “Whiskey Walk,” the very numbers that have not a shred of
KOL’s wardrobe and not a chance of getting the crossover audience the band desperately craves.