Tiger Army

Tiger Army

Music From Regions Beyond

[4/5] Music From Regions Beyond appears to aggregate the musical influences working on the minds of a sizable portion of Southern California’s young people, and it’s a damn perplexing and distressing dogpile. Vocalist/guitarist Nick 13 has a relatively broad range-on “Hotprowl,” his bark meshes perfectly with the No Control-era Bad Religion riffing, while on songs like “LunaTone” and “Ghosts Of Memory” he wails in an almost Morrissey-esque style. The psychobilly sound Tiger Army rode to initial fame only dominates on about half of this album; “Ghosts Of Memory” and “Pain” are particularly retrophonic, the latter sounding like a cross between prime Social Distortion and early Reverend Horton Heat, with Nick crooning like Robert Gordon (look it up) out front. “As The Cold Rain Falls” is straight post-punk, with more of that Morrissey vocal sound and Cure-like keyboards humming atop a bassline that’s pure Peter Hook. “Hechizo De Amor” finds him singing in Spanish; not the worst idea in the world but a somewhat baffling one, given that the song has hardly any Latin flavor. Music From Regions Beyond closes with “Where The Moss Slowly Grows,” which adds lap steel guitar for an almost Western swing feel. All in all, an enjoyably broad-minded slab o’ psychobilly-plus. (HELLCAT) Phil Freeman


ROCKS LIKE:

Social Distortion’s Somewhere Between Heaven And Hell

The Reverend Horton Heat’s Spend A Night In The Box

Morrissey’s Your Arsenal

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