Every once in a great while all those hours spent wasting
time on social media pays off. As I was
swiping my way around the Faceyspace one day recently I happened to be skimming
through posts on a Clutch fan page and happened across a post from another
member who had posted about his musical endeavors and I happened to stop and
read what he had to say. As a musician,
far less accomplished though I may be, I am always interested in the
experiences of fellow musicians, and any musician who is a fan of Clutch definitely
has good taste. He wasn’t shilling his
band but was simply sharing the excitement at the accomplishment of the release
of his band’s latest recording and hopes that music fans would find it
interesting. He explained that the new
record was the culmination of a collaboration with fiction author Jonathan Raab
and that the album would serve as a prelude to the next installment in his
series of novels, a concept album. My
interest piqued, I replied to his post, inquiring as to the name of his band
and relayed my interest in checking the album out. “Mississippi Bones” he replied, thanking me
for my interest. Off to the Bandcamp I
went and looked them up. What I found
was something totally unexpected.
Radio Free Conspiracy Theory touches the fringes of the
ongoing saga of one Cecil Kotto, a small town sheriff and host of a public
access radio show focused on exposing various conspiracies dealing with
monsters, genetic experimentation, government black ops schemes, alien mastery
cults and all manner of X-Files worthy fodder, told in the form of Sheriff
Kotto’s public access radio talk show with songs interspersed between segments
of the radio show. The dialogue sections
are entertaining and well done and the character of Sheriff Kotto is often
hilarious in a whiskey swilling boisterous cop crazy uncle rambling about
conspiracies kind of way, but the key is the music. Full of Southern stoner rock swagger with a
large dash of Clutch influenced vocals in front of heavy
grooving bluesy riffs, Ohio’s Mississippi Bones bring toe-tapping
head-bobbing goodness together with creative songwriting and well-crafted vocal
harmonies to create a fantastically fun album to listen to that plays like a
pulp novel. The result is an album that
actually makes this listener want to delve deeper into the band’s catalog while
also seeking out Mr. Raab’s novels to get caught up on Sheriff Kotto’s story so
far, I have to admit I’m a sucker for a good sci-fi/fantasy/horror novel
series…
For fans of: Clutch, Corrosion of Conformity, Monster Truck,
The X-Files.
-Riffcaster
Tracklist:
1. Open Air
2. A Paranoiac's
Farewell
3. Occult
Deprogrammers
4. Blue Beam Dreams
5. Preacher Jim
6. Devilry & the
Blues in Little Dixie
7. Cattle and Chattle
8. Genetic Flashback
9. Pirated Signal
10. WXXT
11. Corporate
Wendingos
12. 101 Ways To Cook
a Human
13. Believe It or Not
14. The Order of the
Night Moose
15. Geoff Joins a
Cult
16. Ancient
Astronauts and Alien Allegories
17. How Would You
Even Know?
18. The Reptiles Are
Among Us
19. Space Vampire
Bastards Must Die
20. Radio Free
Conspiracy Theory
Mississippi Bones is:
Jared Collins - Vocals, Organ
Dusty Donley - Guitar
Derik Dunson - Guitar, Vocals
Jason Rector - Bass
Jason Miller - Drums
Heather Collins – Vocals
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