American Sixgun are a group of East Coast kids whose big dream in life, it seems, is to be the next Junkyard or
Buckcherry. For some reason they're signed to the Eulogy label, which specializes in hardcore, but their music is pure bluesy Sunset Strip hard rock, with occasional downshifts into
Nickelback territory ("Mr. Pretender"). The lyrics on
The Devil In Your Bones collect every boneheaded rock & roll cliché of the last 30 years -- booze, traitorous women, sex with the aforementioned women, strippers, fightin', and generally being a rock & roll star in your mind if not on the charts. There's a song called "Dirty Lovin'," another called "Rockstars Never Die" -- the narrow vision is on full display. The riffs are decent and
American Sixgun can get through one beer-blast rocker after another with no problem, but when they try to slow it down for a ballad like "Let It Ride," their vocal deficiencies come into sharp relief, as their singer is reduced to talk-singing his way through the song. Throughout the '70s and early '80s, when bluesy hard rock was the dominant soundtrack to bar fights and biker rallies, there were a skidillion third-tier, all-but-faceless bands cranking out unmemorable but occasionally hard-rocking songs just like the ones on this album. Now, in the age of screamo and metalcore,
American Sixgun's retro impulses are likely to earn them novelty points, whereas back in the '70s they'd have been lucky to be the fourth band on the bill underneath
ZZ Top,
Nazareth, and Point Blank.