Grinder Blues: El Dos

Grinder Blues, which features Dug Pinnick of King's X fame on bass and vocals, guitarist and vocalist Jabo Bihlman, and Scot "Little" Bihlman on drums, percussion, and vocals, has a confident mission. To quote Dug directly “The idea for the music was to stay away from the clichés and rock out. If we felt like we were heading into any songs that seemed like standard blues lyrically or musically, we made it a point to veer in the opposite direction." The band is a Hard Blues Rock band that is aiming to offer up a contemporary spin on traditional Blues Rock and that's essentially what El Dos is all about.

The playing throughout is both faithful to the blues tradition and also explosive and dynamic with plenty of top tier virtuosity to power the whole affair. El Dos is full of great individual performances, solid, heavy hitting, organic sounding drumming from Scot, fat bass playing snaking through underneath from Dug and fiery guitar acrobatics from Jabo. The vocals are mainly handled by Dug, however all three of the guys take turns on the microphone, to varying degrees of success. The vocals are where I feel like they strayed from the path of their stated goal. On almost every song they seem to fall into very generic blues tropes, both melodically and lyrically. For example I love the funky groove of “Gotta get me some of that� but seriously have we not heard those lyrics in thousands of other songs by now? Or the song “Who wants a spankin� which musically lives up to the mission statement but again those lyrics are so cringe inducing and juvenile. Also on the song “When the storm comes� the mixed vocals feel kind of amateurish compared to the level of the instrumentation on display. Again the song has a lot going for it, a cool almost later-era Soundgarden vibe on some of the riffs (actually in several of the songs too) and some tasty slide guitar playing, but the vocals not quite living up to the promise.

The production is good with an almost live feel through much of the album that really lends itself well to this style of music. The music, even though somewhat held back by the vocals, is pretty damn cool. The moments when the band stops singing and just plays are cookin’. El Dos feels somewhat underdone or maybe it's better to say unbalanced. Instrumentally it’s electric and definitely a lot of fun. Vocally, it's not all terrible by any means, but it’s not on the same level as the rest of the music, hence the lack of balance. A fun album that comes close but somewhat falls short of its desired path.

Grinder Blues is:
dUg Pinnick - bass and vocals
Jabo Bihlman - guitar and vocals
Scot "Little" Bihlman - drums, percussion, and vocals.

Track listing:

1. Another Way Around
2. Everybody
3. Gotta Get Me Some Of That
4. Who Wants A Spankin
5. When The Storm Comes
6. Somebody
7. Keep Away
8. Hold Me Close
9. Hand Of God
10. King Without A Throne

Added: August 21st 2021
Reviewer: Benjamin Dudai
Score:
Related Link: Band Facebook Page
Hits: 1186
Language: english

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