Looks Good On The Side Of A Van...Sounds Good Anywhere!

ASTROVAN – “You Said It Man” CD EP ’10 (Private, US) – Remember back in the ‘90’s, when “Seattle” meant more than just the name of a city in the Pacific Northwest? It meant more than the place Ichiro plays baseball or more than the town that’s home field for a bald quarterback. No, “Seattle” was virtually synonymous with the birth of an entire genre of heavy music, it’s most famous son being of course the tragic figure of Kurt Cobain. Well, I sure as hell hope none of these ASTROVAN guys follows in Mr. C’s personal footsteps but with this nifty little disc, these 5 are trying to put their place of business back on the map. “You Said It Man” is nothing complicated. It’s nothing that’s going to make you sit back, scratch your head and say to yourself, “Jeez, I wonder what it is these artists are trying to say to me here?” No, there’ll be no time for that, honcho, because you’ll be too busy just rawking your ass off to even care. See, ASTROVAN are a 5-piece that takes a generous helping of ‘70’s riff-rock, a heaping dollup of metal and then just grooves like no tomorrow. You don’t have to go any further than opener “Too Proud” to get walloped by a back-breaker of a rhythm. The clear, top-level production job brings the powerful riffing into sharp relief and atop it, Deezer’s incisive, throaty vox and the wah-wah soloing of Sam Damage ride like a biker on a Harley. The boys mix it up nicely too, with a faster neck-snapper like “Twelve Gauge Promise” easing in nicely next to the laid-back-yet-seething pulse of “Every Change.” “You Said It Man” is a slab of high-test windows-down rawk and my only wish is that it were longer than 6 songs. Still, making the listener hungry for more ain’t a bad idea and it beats the hell out of some 68 minute disc that’s bloated with filler. That’s What I’m Talking About

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