Deadbolt

San Diego veteran ghoul-surf-rockers Deadbolt are back with their fifth album and it’s a theme record that revolves around supernatural takes on the traditional trucker motif in American country music. All the material is moody, slow, reverb-powered surf-rock with monotone, spoken-word vocals. Songs like “Billy’s Dead,” “Red Cooley,” “McGortsy” and “The Mocker” are story-songs that all tell gruesome, hardboiled tales of truckers who’ve gone mad, who are undead and are just generally bad asses. The only problem with this disc is that the tempo and the melody of each song are almost identical. It’s almost like the CD is one big, long, song. This fuels the rock-opera vibe of the album, but it also makes it seem like the material here is movie soundtrack work that got separated from its film and doesn’t stand on its own all that well. The idea of doing a dark version of a Red Sovine album has a lot of rich possibilities, but this record seems hastily thrown together. For die-hard Deadbolt fans only.