EIGHTEEN WHEELS BURNING

Hey, Meteor City's back! Good to see the nameplate under new management, still flying the flag for the unrepentantly shaggy, heavy-lidded and riff-tastic. EIGHTEEN WHEELS BURNING is a hard-livin', hard-touring stoner rock band risen from the long-cold ashes of THE WANT, who did a record on Southern Lord almost a decade ago. After a few years of kicking around and undergoing standard-issue lineup changes, these guys have finally coughed up this low-rent, high-octane sophomore scorcher.

I doubt you'll be surprised to find there are no surprises whatsoever on "Tweak'd Out, Strung Up and Redlined". This is rough-hewn boogie rock, steeped in the classics, with go-fer-it vocals, crunchy riffs dripping with fuzz, and deep in the pocket grooves as only a power trio seems to deliver. The production is good and greezy, if obviously done on a shoestring, but this is the kind of music it's real easy to fuck up with too many layers and too much gloss. It sounds a lot like 18WB walked in, set up, hit the bong a few times while the engineer set up a couple mikes, and blasted out this record in an evening. And all was right with the world.

These guys have the bluesy swagger and the early Iommi metal soul in spades, though, as raveups like "Grand National" and slower stompers like "Third Reich Trucker" (what?) readily attest. These guys are a little more metallic, but they remind me a lot of genre-mates AMPLIFIED HEAT in the sheer integrity department — they don't mess around with their core sound, but they pursue it with a dogmatic fervor, and that heart gives 'em an edge over a helluva lotta pretenders and poseurs.

From revved-up tunes like "Cockblocked" to the more moody numbers mentioned above, EIGHTEEN WHEELS BURNING doesn't disappoint. It may be textbook stoner rock, but hell, there's been less and less of that coming out these days, after the glut of it earlier in the decade — and when it's done with this much gumption and grit, it's hard not to get behind it. Good stuff.