LAMONT: Thunder Boogie CD digipak. stoner rock trio. Ac/dc, Blues Rock, motorhead. Massachusetts, USA. Check video + audio

Description

stoner rock trio founded in 1998 in Allston, Massachusetts, USA

Few bands come across on record like they’re storming straight through your living room with an in yer face sound that’s like six speakers pinned side to side on either side of your head, amps cranked beyond limits while the band trudges with muddy boots and buckshot. Its a Beantown boogie of brain battering proportions as Bostons threesome bore of Thunder Boogie and trailer trash tenacity push the brashness well past the boundaries of fan friendly commercial Rock and star polish.
Envision bands like AC/DC and Motorhead in their infancies — unimaginable, I know — but that starve for the stage attitude and grind ’em down intensity signalled the start of something wonderfully reckless and raunchy in a rock n’ roll game gone bubblegum. With an already impressive following riding on their collective power cord, Lamonts six year journeys seen them hit the trails with fellow Bostonians, Scissorfight, The Cutthroats9, and the incomparable kings of beer, bud, and bad, Gangreen, while currently warming up for U.K. denim and doom legends, Orange Goblin, and doin’ some underground style sound tracking for extreme sports and video.
Tunes like the fast-paced and menacing, “Hotwire,”

“Vegas,” “Hells Got Me Runnin'”

raw and reminiscent of “Let Their Be Rock,” and the anthemic Punk surge of “Psychopath,” reveal a DIY ethic with a go for broke delivery, and coarse Rollins-like vox that together recall early pioneers like Motorhead and AC/DC, instilled yet with a Southern-fried sarcasm and Stooge-infused virus thats destined to affect millions with ill manners, nerve damage, and self-inflicted aural wounds.
Three guys, three chords, feedback, distortion, and barroom backing chorus, Thunder Boogie is like thunder and lightning surging through your veins and out your eye sockets, lighting your mind and renewing faith that rock n’ roll was always meant to be loud, obnoxious, dirty and devil sent.

Thunder Boogie 2002
Release Date 2002
Label: Traktor7
Format: CD
Duration 31:05
Catalog #004

Lamonts punked-up version of the music made famous by bands like Skynyrd and the Allman Brothers will keep your attention throughout this CD. Its essentially the Confederate-flag-brandishing blues rock that people with motorcycle jackets and very long beards like, only with a healthy dose of John Spencer-esque looseness and punk energy. These influences, while not exactly like oil and water in the first place, come together nicely on a track like I Saw Red, which spreads out the song structure of a conventional punk tune to include more guitar fills than you’d hear if you accidentally left your tape recorder running at the guitar center for an hour. Thats pretty much the story with Lamont. Theres something for everyone here: a little bit of riffage, a little bit of melody and a little bit of venom with nary a deviation from the formula throughout. Lamont may not be for everyone, but if this kind of neo-hipster boogie is on your radar I dare say this is one of the more exciting bands playing this style. Comes on a very nicely done digipak cover.

During their time together, Boston-based trio Lamont put out two EPs and two full-lengths. Thunder Boogie was the first, arriving a decade ago in 2002 on Traktor 7 Records after the 1999 EP and Muscle, Guts and Luck EP and preceding their swan song, Population 3. They broke up in 2007 — guitarist/vocalist Pete Knipfing went on to play in Mess with the Bull — and since then, info on the band has become sparse to the point on nonexistence. Even their MySpace page is gone by now.

A pretty familiar story — band does stuff then breaks up — and I’d leave it there were it not for the unencumbered freeballing swagger of Thunder Boogie itself. The basic fact of the matter is if this record came across my desk for review today, I’d fall all over myself to give it a glowing overly-detailed review, and while 10 years on, it’s not exactly groundbreaking for heavy or stoner rock, it’s clear even now that Lamont‘s penchant for speed-riffing and driving grooves — rushed from the start of the blazing “Hot Wire” — wasn’t about innovation as much as it was about drinking, classic rock worship, big hooks and no bullshit.

Like the best of Boston’s heavy rock scene then and now, there’s a strong undercurrent of punk in what Lamont does. Nine tracks in 31 minutes means there isn’t much time for screwing around, and “Vegas,” “I Saw Red” and “One White Line” ensure the first half of Thunder Boogie is filled with strong choruses, motor-ready rock and a blinding sense of pace that, even when it slows, hardly gives you time to process before Knipfing, bassist Mike Cosgrove and drummer Todd Bowman are on to the next thing. By the time they get around to “Thunderboogie,” “Hell’s Got Me Runnin’,” “Psychopath” and the infectious closer “Agent 49” — which tops seven minutes only because of the bonus track — they’re well dug in, dripping attitude on the gang vocals of “Psychopath” or the post-rockabilly brashness of the finale.

Thunder Boogie finally came into my possession just hours after acquiring the Johnny Arzgarth haul, presented to me by the man himself, whose reaction earlier when I’d told him about my trouble finding any of Lamont‘s material was, “Oh yeah, let me call Pete,” in the manner of a person who gets things done. So be it. I don’t know how I’d ever be able to pick up any of Lamont‘s other releases — unless, I was to, say, move to Massachusetts sometime in the next year and immediately begin perusing CD stores — so the chance to hear this one was certainly much appreciated.

The video’s kind of lo-res, but should be enough for you to get the point:

Lamont, “Hot Wire”