Beatipiller is the third full- length album from Pretoria band The Black Cat Bones – and if you haven’t heard them yet, you’re in for a treat.
Described as “riff-based new-school blues rock”, there’s no doubt the blues have inspired the 12-track line-up, but there’s a serious overlay of good old- fashioned head-banging rock, too.
Your Tongue is Restless is typical, a driving monster of a rocker, while the eponymous Black Cat Bone sets the scene for the album; tight, hard percussion, with electric guitars that threaten to skid right off the CD.
But it’s not all uncompro- mising guitars and drums, there’s a fair mix of mournful blues ballads and properly sung by voices that sound like they have been mari- nated in Jack Daniels for a decade.
Like all authentic blues albums, there has to be some theme of heartache and railing against the system, in The Black Cat Bones’s case it’s the plight of the Bushmen in Namibia and their forced relocation and exile.
Don’t expect blues like Bob Dylan might have played it; this is blues on Red Bull – and, I daresay, all the better for it.