Hellacopters

This is a reissue of the 1997 White Jazz/House of Kicks split ten-inch, now on CD and with a new package for the USA. All the Hellacopters songs here are covers, with one original thrown in. Now, cover records are never the most exciting thing, but at least the Hellacopters have recorded these Lynyrd Skynyrd (“Working for MCA”), Wilson Pickett (“A Man and a Half”), Bob Seger (“Her Strut”), and the MC5 (“American Ruse”) tracks in a dry but rockin’ ‘70s boogie production style. The best song is by far the Skynyrd cover, with the already too often MC5 song being big loser here. Here’s a special note to bands out there; stop doing MC5 and Stooges covers, they were perfect the first time around, and you’re never going to “rock them out” any better than the original! Moving on to the Gluecifer section of the CD, the singer’s voice is very difficult to take seriously, becomes really annoying fast and pretty much makes this band impossible to listen to. Behind his raspy, faux-tough guy, Southern metal caterwauling is an okay boogie rock band, but their playing can’t save these five songs from that great delete bin in the sky. Hellacopter fans should check out the ten-inch version of this release sans the Gluecifer songs.