Brand New Sin – Tequila
Century Media Records (released Oct. 3, 2006)
Hard Rock/Metal
According to Century Media Records, this album is chock full of “classic meat-and-potatoes hard rock.” I have heard comparisons with Black Sabbath and Pantera, and that’s seemingly pretty audacious, so I thought I’d check out the album to draw my own conclusion. As of right now, their claim to fame is the theme song for The Big Show, and let’s hope that they can shed that stigma very soon…
This is the third full-length release by the Syracuse-based band, and it’s been a little over a year since their last album, Recipe for Disaster was released. Tequila connotes a bit of a Southern flavor, and this is evidenced in the majority of the album, which is very much just pure hard rock with no fancy bells or whistles (read: scratching, synth, or shrieking/whining/growling). It should be well received among fans of both Southern rock and heavy metal in which band members do not wear makeup and/or masks. Brand New Sin should be getting as much publicity as the mediocre Disturbed has received over the years, and is much more deserving of it.
Joe Altier’s vocals fall slightly below Phil Anselmo in intensity (although it does strike a resemblance), but take that slightly less intense Phil Anselmo, mix him with the bluesy Southern charge of Ronnie Van Zandt, and that’s about where Altier sits (as is heard in “Said and Done”, “The Proposition”, and “See the Sun”), which is really not a bad place to be. He speeds it up a bit on a few songs, but mostly keeps a slower, enjoyable tempo throughout broken up sporadically by some really nice guitar interludes. “Numero Dos” is a solid track, and actually sounds a lot like a harder version of old-school Stone Temple Pilots, not only in the music but in Altier channeling his inner Scott Weiland, but not doing as many drugs in the process. If that were the case, I’m sure guitarist Chris Wiechmann probably had something to do with keeping the drugs away, formerly hailing from straight-edge sweethearts Earth Crisis. Peter Steele drops in for a well-executed cameo on “Reaper Man” (again, channeling older STP in the process), which leads up to the final track, a cover of The Animals’ “House of the Rising Sun”. Opening up with a stripped down guitar intro, “House of the Rising Sun” manages to slow it down a bit while keeping the dark and melancholy tone of the original and adding a bit of an edge while not overdoing it (see, e.g., the aforementioned Earth Crisis’ cover of “Paint It, Black”). In the last minute or so of the track, they pick up the tempo to about the same level as “Motörhead”, and that’s a nice added touch to close out the set.
Mushroomhead sucks balls. This is not an opinion. This is a fact. Since Brand New Sin is currently touring with Mushroomhead, I would be remiss not to state that if their live show does their studio work any justice, they will be blowing away Mushroomhead at every single show, because they are pretty damned good. Let’s just hope that the Mushroomhead fans will realize that.
Rating: 
Cheers
-JF2k6!
