Columbus biker rock rednecks American Dog keep cranking out the high-octane classic metal, only this time there’s a new drummer joining Steve “Thick Tone” Theado and Michael “Uncle Salty” Hannon. The man dropped into the kegger is Michael “Hazard” Harris, and whether it is he or producer Joe Viers or Sonic Lounge Studios in magnificent Grove City, there’s a bite to the bottom end that propels this thing like a mailman chased by the three hyenas on the molten-hot cover. Weirdly, I think the album’s best songs fill up the back half of the album, which is always a good sign of a stayer, although far an’ above fave is ‘Old Dog, New Tricks’ followed closely by ‘Bathroom Romance’ where Hannon rocks the chorus through the will of his shouty vocals and endless sleazy story-telling. Steve’s riffs reverberate from Deadly Tedly to Joe Perry and back again, with bluesy solos often wah-wah’ed like Iommi, again, pushing American Dog to the top of the tough biker rock realm, somewhere between BLS, Motorhead and the dirty hair metal from ’90 to ’92, or kinda like Nashville Pussy’s heaviest material played by serious rock veterans. Again, late in the sequence, another gem emerges in ‘Splinterin’ Sally’ which is a pedal-to-the-metal intensification of Ted’s ‘Sweet Sally’ (and then Ted’s actually quoted on the last track’s sloe-jam section), while ‘Off The Chain’ display’s Steve’s effortless hot licks, again, the perfect aggressive twinning to Hannon’s tales of life in a hurry to hit whatever’s in the next town over.
