 Critical Raves For
ANGRY JOHNNY & The KILLBILLIES
"Hankenstein"
MAGNET, July/August 1997
Legend has it that at one Angry Johnny gig, during a song's pause, a befuddled concert goer remarked, "He really is angry, isn't he?" However, thanks to the cover painting of Hank Williams crossed with Frankenstein (Hankenstein - get it?) and a generally scary-on-the-surface demeanor, Angry Johnny and the boys have occasionally been branded as something of a novelty act. I don't buy it; Angry storytelling, often painfully told in a Waits-esque croak, is way too vivid to be so cavalierly dismissed. Has he really lived tales such as "Life, Love, Death and the Meter Man" ("so he fired up that chainsaw and he laid that sucker low") and "Brand New Girl" ("I'm gonna skin you alive/And make a suit of your hide")? Certainly not, but his heartfelt brand of traditional country/inspirational rock surely rings true. Hankenstein may not be everyone's plate of roadkill, but if you listen to it and see this band play, you shouldn't be scared shitless so
much as bowled over by Angry's integrity and intensity. If not, perhaps he's got a chainsaw with your name on it. -- Matt Hickey
STEREO REVIEW, April 1997
OPTION, January-February 1997
ANGRY JOHNNY & THE KILLBILLIES "Hankenstein"
The caricature on the front cover depicts a big-Stetsoned, rotting-green, stitched-up Hand Sr.; talk about wearing one's influences on the sleeve. Although the less said of the grotesque, lawsuit-beckoning inside photo (let's just say it would make Ed Gein proud) the better. So if you'll be expecting a sleazy, hoisting-many-pitchers, roots-rock twang and drang set, you'll be rewarded. This Boston combo kicks things off with a tender tale of chainsaw dismemberment on the Pogues-like "Life, Love, Death And The Meter Man." From there they take you through yet more tales of life (a catchy harmonica-fed pop sing-along called "Racing The Train" that brings to mind the Jacobites), love ( a Social Distortionesque "Big Bang", death (the hair-raising acoustic rocker "Mr. Undertaker") and more dismemberment ("Brand New Girl," bearing sweet lyrics like "I'm gonna skin you alive and make a
suit out of your hide"). The final track is the kind of thing Charlie Daniels would've written if he'd grown up listening to the Gun Club instead of Bill Monroe: "Drag Racing The Devil," with its Eldorado-versus-VW Microbus soul-duel motif, fuzz guitars and train-a-comin' beat, is just about perfect. -- Fred Mills
NO DEPRESSION, January-February 1997
ANGRY JOHNNY & THE KILLBILLIES,
LIVE-November 9, 1996 - Local 506 Chapel Hill NC
Look up the noun "dive" in the dictionary, and there's a picture of a place much nicer than Chapel Hill's Local 506. The long and narrow club, with its exposed duct work and bizarre murals, looks like it was designed by Terry Gilliam on a PBR bender, and the benches around the perimeter have that unnaturally red padding found only in four-calendar diners and low-rent bars. In other words, it's a perfect place to hear some loud, few frills music.
Thus, it's high praise to say the Angry Johnny (who's actually quite amiable, 3especially for a guy who's written not one but two songs about death by chainsaw) & the Killbillies fit right in during a recent visit from their hometown of Northampton MA, that found them playing first in what amounted to a four-band greasy-guitar/garagabilly showcase.
Starting out with their acoustic format - -Johnny on acoustic guitar, Jim Joe Greedy on upright bass, Al Camino on mandolin and "Sleepy Animal" Kaisla (he of the celebrated large cranium) on drums -- and gradually substituting electric guitars and bass, the band tore through 15 songs in 45 minutes, with the appropriately titled set-closer "Drag Racing The Devil" summing up the pace and mood of the preceding numbers.
Before diving head first into the blistering "202", a cut from their debut album Hankenstein, Angry Johnny introduced the song as being "about some poor fuck getting blown away, which is pretty much what they're all about." Or, to paraphrase another Northeasterner, More Songs About Killings and Blood.
They'd do well to go easy on the blood-and-guts themes and Z-movie images, because this band is much too talented to be stuffed into the novelty-act bin. The evening's second song, "Meet My Maker", could create a new subgenre called hardcore acoustic gospel, while on "Life, Love, Death, and the Meter Man", they transcended the shock-movie lyrics by coming on like the Pogues gone Yankee. Proving that they could be a fine pure country band if they had a mind to, the "Billies offered the downright pretty "Whiskey" and "Prison Walls", the latter reminiscent of Jason and the Scorchers' "Pray for Me Momma (I'm a Gypsy Now)". Most impressive was "Bonita Chiquita", ("a Mexican folk song we learned in jail in Tijuana", deadpanned Angry Johnny), featuring some speedy picking by the apparently recently parol3ed fronting trio.
After 10 songs, Greedy traded his upright bass for an electric, and Camino make a similar swap. Surprisingly, the band became less powerful as they got more electric, kind of like the town bully tickling your ear with a fist after slapping you silly with an open hand. Still, an entertaining ride with a promising band; a couple fewer cadavers and a little more mandolin would have made it close to perfect. -- Rick Cornell
NO DEPRESSION September-October 1996
ANGRY JOHNNY & THE KILLBILLIES "Hankenstein"
It's fitting that the first sound emanating from this record is a buzzing chainsaw. It serves as fair warning for a record with a morbid fixation on violent deaths by car crash, suicide -- and, yes, chainsaw. As the buzzing fades out, an acoustic guitar strums in and Angry Johnny proceeds to tell the tale of a jilted lover who mistakenly sends a meter man "packing to the promised land". The song is pure white-trash Pogues and was, against my will, stuck in my head for days.
The band hails from Easthampton, Massachusetts, lists Hasil Adkins as their favorite musician, all go by stage names and recorded their album at a meat processing plant. The 15 songs here fare best when they are primarily acoustic, but that could have something to do with the fact that the most electric songs are the ear grating, six-minute version of "Jesus, Please Come On Down", the fittingly obnoxious "The Creep", and the nine-minute epic "Drag Racing The Devil". "Chainsaw Charlie" survives the plug-in and finds a tight groove.
On the whole, Hankenstein is a bit heavy on corny gimmicks, but there are bright spots. Angry is capable of occasional lyrical flash, and I'm guessing the hometown bar is packed on the weekends the Killbillies hold forth. "202" and "Whiskey" both are first-rate songs, and the character who inhabits "Jawbone" pulls no punches with his cynical world view while describing why he wants to become "the biggest bastard you have ever met."
If you like bands with a sense of humor and songs about cars and girls that will break your heart every time, you'll like Johnny. -- M.P. Brannan
FLAGPOLE MAGAZINE, November 6, 1996 Athens, GA
YEAH, BUT KILLBILLIES IN A VW BUS?
Just the other day, I was at the corner of West Broad and Pulaski when a green and white beat-up Volkswagen van pulled up beside me. A guy leaned out the window and inquired with a rasp: "Hey Hayseed, you wanna race?"
Taking inventory of my Pinto-powered auto and being completely unaware of what was being wagered, I decided to respectfully decline the offer.
"Well, do you know where I could get some decent beer, and I don't mean none of this Heineken or Rolling Rock crap either," he bellowed. "I mean real beer."
I indicated the location of the nearest suitable drinking establishment and the van took off, ran the red light and two-wheeled it around the corner, leaving some empty PBR cans rolling on the ground.
"What was that?" I asked the man on the corner who had witnessed the spillage.
"That was Angry Johnny and the Killbillies," the man on the corner said. "And if you ain't heard a livin', lovin', dyin', drinkin' and killin' song the way Angry and his Killbillies do it, then you ain't heard shit."
The group, which hails from Easthampton, Mass., and features Angry Johnny on vocals and guitar, Jim Joe Greedy on bass, Al Camino on guitar and lap steel and Finsman Animall Kaisla on drums, are out raising a maelstrom of havoc and running from the law in support of their new Tar Hut release, Hankenstein.
Angry Johnny and the Killbillies (which in no "way, shape or form" has any member of the band Killbilly in it) made a name for themselves as a side stage act during the Lollapalooza tour in 1995. But their down-home sensibilities got thrown for a loop at a tour stop in New York City when the band stopped their performance mid-set because they thought their amps were on fire. (No one bothered to tell the band about the smoke machine that was set up.)
But they rolled into the studio right after the tour and cut nearly 70 songs in a three-month period, 15 of which comprise Hankenstein. In the album, Angry Johnny sings about cars, racing, drinking, death and the occasional chainsaw in songs that are wrapped up in rock-a-country psycho-billy beat with some two-part Buck Owens/Roy Clark harmonies thrown in to boot. But the band also works in the realm of straight-up rock in the blistering guitar-layered "Jesus, Please Come On Down," to the spooky cool of "Mr. Undertaker" and the fireside stomp of "Jawbone" and "Racing the Train."
Hankenstein 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. But as happy as the band is with their new album, they are also damn proud of the amount of beer consumption at their shows. -- Dave Basham
HUH, November 1996
ANGRY JOHNNY & THE KILLBILLIES "Hankenstein"
Angry Johnny is your basic psychobilly: he begins his debut with a song about a jealous husband chainsawing the meter man, then he segues neatly into "Mr. Undertaker," imploring that his remains be made to look nice for the folks. Mr. Johnny would seem to be a deeply troubled chap, and apparently all this anger, and this issues he has with loving and being left, haven't yet been worked out in group. If all that's true, then this is a remarkable and remarkably disturbing collection of character sketches. Except for "Poor Little Raccoon": If it ain't "Dead Skunk In The Middle Of The Road," I don't want to hear about it.
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