After making records for over twenty years, Louisiana-based cowpunk renegades
Dash Rip Rock have ventured into territory they've never explored before -- they've made a concept album, albeit one suited to their Dixie-fried tastes. 2007's
Hee Haw Hell is a 12-song cycle in which a nameless redneck dies in the midst of a wild party (chronicled in "Fall Down, Go Boom") and wanders through Hell's various circles and tributaries, where he encounters sexually crazed women ("MOAF,") an ill-fated Southern rock band ("Southern Rain"), insane preachers obsessed with kinky sex and pork ("Chariots of Hellfire," which features a perfectly cast cameo from
Mojo Nixon) and A&R men who took the teeth out of punk rock ("Punk Rock Never Happened"), among other things. While
Hee Haw Hell is a little short on a consistent narrative, the album's "hillbillies in Hades" theme permeates everything here, and it suits the band's rowdy attitude quite well.
Dash Rip Rock have written a strong batch of songs for this album, which kick hard while bringing the laughs at the right time, and the band (Bill Davis on guitar, Brimstone Broussard on bass and Eric De Padua on drums) is in tight and hard-rocking shape, with plenty of help from the likes of
Bill Lloyd,
Jello Biafra (whose Alternative Tentacles label brought this out) and members of
the Upper Crust and
Supagroup. There's an old saying that if you're gonna go to hell, you may as well go for a reason, and
Dash Rip Rock's vacation in the Land of Fire and Brimstone has helped them bring back a damned fine album:
Hee Haw Hell shows these guys aren't running out of heat anytime soon. ~ Mark Deming