#jethrowrecords

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True Sons Of Thunder, Spoonful of Seedy Dudes (Jeth Row, 2011) / Stop and Smell Your Face (Little Big Chief, 2013)

These two are old, I know. But I read somewhere that TSOT are about to drop a new album, so I thought it’d be worth going over their first two one more time to get people up to speed on this band and their unique take on punk rock.

Now, you should be wary of “unique” takes on punk rock. In its history the genre has been taken apart and rebuilt so many times, now the only original ideas left are the bad ones. But, see, this doesn’t apply to wizards, and that’s what True Sons of Thunder are.

That’s why they can do what they do, which is basically to lift riffs from the rich catalogue of KBD punk they clearly absorbed in their DNA and spit them out in the form of songs that are grimy like the floor of a punk club’s toilet, rugged like a 30 year old leather jacket, mean like a drunk asshole at a show and funny like what happens to the aforementioned drunk asshole when the rest of the crowd’s had enough.

The screenprinted art on their first record’s sleeve feels like thick, sticky tar, and I can’t think of a better way to represent their music. Their songs fit perfectly in the tradition of great American punk—Crime? Rocket From The Tombs (they cover "Life Stinks”)? Stooges? Kajun SS? Stick Men With Ray Guns?—with a heavy, slow, bluesy Southern feel and a penchant for burying their work in buzzing noise. “Get On The Bus”, on their second album, is a straight, in-your-face punk rock anthem—with a layer of actual bus sounds tossed on top just to fuck with you.

Now, these are old school punk records and have an air of toxic white masculinity that can be off putting to many, and rightly so. I genuinely think that both musically and attitude-wise, any other band who tried to pull off what they do would make me fucking cringe. But that’s the thing: they’re wizards. They just have it. If there’s only space for one middle-aged rock’n’roll man-band in your record collection, you should save that spot for True Sons of Thunder.

Click here to listen to “Get Away” off Spoonful of Seedy Dudes on YouTube.

Click here to listen to “Mother May I Now Spell Cup” off Stop and Smell Your Face on YouTube.

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