 Critical Raves For
ANGRY JOHNNY & The KILLBILLIES
Hankenstein Reviews
What's So Funny Reviews
“Angry Johnny delivers the 90’s
equivalent of Doc Boggs’ old Appalachian murder ballads. In 50 years,
academics will ponder this stuff, drawing conclusions about the dark side
of the American soul.”
Tony Scherman, ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY
"..if you’re
expecting a sleazy, hoisting-many-pitchers, roots-rock twang und drang
set, you’ll be rewarded.”
Fred Mills, OPTION
"...veers from darkly
foreboding to wry and all usually within the same song, much like Johnny
Cash did circa his alcohol-soaked Live at Folsom Prison.”
Dave Basham, Flagpole Magazine, Athens Ga
“...playing bent-roots-rockabilly-club-you-over-the-head whiskey-and-hemoglobin
drinking music with a scary number of references to chainsaws and pickle
jars.”
Dick Dent, LOLLYPOP
"...the Killbillies
stomp, hoot, holler, and roll in the aisles while singin’ songs
about death, coming up short, getting dumped, and redemption. Big rigs
crash, bank robbers get shot, brothers avenge sisters, women leave for
other men, trailer chicks screw a lot, the devil comes calling, the dead
go on dates, and voices say kill again. It’s a tremendous trip down
the seedy side of the street:-Angry and the boys have turned in this year’s
finest 2 a.m. drinking album.”
John O’Neill, THE WORCESTER PHOENIX
“Sounding like a ranting, raving Merle Haggard fronting the devil’s
own pub band.”
Randy Silver, Uno Mas, Chicago
“The most rip-roarin’,
butt-kickin’, combo yet to bust out of the so-called No Depression
ranks.”
Holly George-Warren, THE VILLAGE VOICE
"...brutal songs
filled with mutilation, murder, cannibalism and destructive retaliation
that would make David Allen Coe blush.”
Bill Nehill, ARTVOICE, Buffalo
"...Angry Johnny
and the Killbillies serve up flashy, trashy, country-fried rockabilly
on all the great themes-drag racing, car crashes, whiskey, roadkill, prison,
Lucifer, and lots and lots o’ death.”
CHICAGO READER
“in some alternative
universe where Elvis never got fat and the Hell’s Angels run the
government, Angry Johnny and the Killbillies are superstars.”
Puttin the Voodoo on Monroe
Daily Hampshire Gazette
November 25, 2004
CDs deserving thanks
Angry Johnny, & the Killbiliies, ‘Putting the Voodoo on Monroe’ Halloween, not Thanksgiving, is the holiday when we should be celebrating Angry Johnny. His tales of murder and love gone very wrong will scare you out of your wits, because the stories are so real. Angry Johnny does not play at despair and evil, he follows it all the way down with an unflinching eye.
The black humor in songs like “Lucky Day” (“It was not his lucky day”) will have you chuckling until the end when the protagonist dies a grisly death outside the gas station he was trying to rob. “He came to rest in a bloody mess, up against the Coke machine.”
On his unrelentingly excellent and dark new album, banjos pluck, guitars strum and quiver while the anti-heroes of these songs get in deep trouble. Angry Johnny sounds like he could be Fred Eaglesmith’s dangerous brother. He writes with Eagelsmith’s feel for details of a down-and-out life.
“Jerry Lynn” is a bruised, pulp novel of a song about another desperate soul who leaves his girl crying at the bar as he goes off toe move some car full of cocaine and stolen guns on the Chesterfield highway.
Characters with names like Shelburne Montgomery reference places in western Massachusetts and on his Web site “(“getangry.com”) Angry Johnny describes his band as “Connecticut river Valley boys from right around Killville, MA.”
Angry Johnny & the Killbillies are performing Friday night at the Apollo Grill in Easthampton in their annual “Thanks for Nothin” party.
I would not expect to hear “Over the river and through the woods to grandmother’s house we go.” -- Johnny Memphis
Angry Johnny & The Killbillies - Puttin The Voodoo On Monroe
Angry Johnny sounds like he's been drowning his rage in Jack. On the verge of consciousness, he finds just enough energy to howl his way through wild revival tunes like "I Think I See The Light", trashy blues numbers like "Body Doing Time", mandolin and banjo punkabilly railburners and the like. Self-described as the perfect soundtrack for a road trip down to hell, Puttin' The Voodoo On Monroe comes through on that, for the Killbillies shave the dark face of Americana and drink the sink water to chase the whiskey. With tales of murder, betrayal, redemption and loss, from right around Killville, MA, these Connecticut River Valley boys have secured their places in hell's drunk-tank. - MilesofMusic.com
Live Show reviews
The Church of the Angry Mind
By Shawn Stone
Metroland ONLINE "The Alternative Newsweekly Of New York's Capital Region"
Angry Johnny and the Killbillies, City Limits, Michael Eck with Jackinany, Furnature Music Valentine’s, April 5, 2003
It was another evening of Brand New Country at Ye Old Valentine’s. You could tell right away, because the “Brand New Country” banner—bearing the silhouette of a fellow who looks an awful lot like Abe Lincoln but is probably some musical icon I should recognize and don’t—was hanging up at the back of the downstairs stage.
This informal series, organized by Jeff Burger, emcee of WRPI-FM’s Sunday Morning Coming Down, brings together musicians whose work falls somewhere on the country & western continuum. Last time around, the lineup included the sweet-sounding alt-country of Coal Palace Kings and the gospel-influenced songcraft of Hayseed. This night, with Angry Johnny and the Killbillies on the bill, the mood was noticeably darker.
Angry Johnny and the aforementioned Killbillies are from Easthampton, Mass., a town they lovingly call “Killville.” Killville, we are made to understand, is a world away from what the tourist bureau likes to call the “cultural Berkshires,” or the comfortable college confines of nearby Amherst or Northampton—all the songs are about Killville’s residents and their lovin’ and sinnin’ and dyin’.
It’s a place where the lonely, treacherously curvy state highway through town claims the lost and doomed (“202,” which bore a passing resemblance to Love’s “Between Clark and Hillsdale”); where a simple grocery-store holdup ends in an orgy of blood and betrayal (“Frank”); where if a girl is well-known enough to be enshrined in song, she’s too evil to live (“Jezebel”).
Angry Johnny’s voice was angry indeed: rough-hewn and thick with the weight of sin. Like a black-hatted preacher whose intimate knowledge of sin was earned through personal experience, Johnny’s between-song patter was loaded with gloomy references to the almighty.
The band sounded angry. Whether ripping through apocalyptic tales of death or zipping through lighter, punkabilly numbers (“Disposable Boy,” “Funny Thing About Heroes”), the Killbillies didn’t hold back. Their arrangements were novel, too: Who ever heard of playing electric-guitar leads on a mandolin, and making it not only credible but exciting?
Winston Salem Blurb (March 2003, pdf 186K)
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