Aside from the "perfect woman," IfS focuses on the important things in life: car
author: Darcie Stevens (Austin Chronicle)
Break out the Jim Beam, and put away the crystal – the Ortiz brothers are gonna destroy everything. Toting the savviest name change Red River's ever seen, Amplified Heat is dying to blow your speakers. With their debut on local imprint Arclight, In for Sin, Jim, Chris, and Gian are out of the Honky and Dixie Witch shadows. Jim and Gian more than likely tossed their volume knobs years ago, and Chris beats the hell out of the kit just to garner their attention and yours. Despite a bit of wank streaming from Jim's SG, In for Sin simulates the Red River live experience on disc: hair whipping around like a tornado, Converses on stained carpet, "Can we get more Lone Stars up here?" The opening title track forays into classic Southern stomp, chauvinism included ("She gonna cook me some dinner, when my workday is done, and when I'm in the mood for some love, she gonna give me some"). Aside from the "perfect woman," IfS focuses on the important things in life: cars, drugs, drink, and money. This is rock & roll, after all. "Roadrunner" screams past at 120 mph, with "Wagon Wheel" rolling in right behind toting Motörhead and Nashville Pussy. With their blues roots showing ("Just a Junkie," "The Gunny"), mixed in with a devotion to classic rock ("Fever," "Reflections"), Amplified Heat is a swirling vortex of blood, spit, and history. Those volume knobs are hardly missed.
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author: Brian Varney (Lollipop)
Amplified Heat play the kind of high-energy boogie rock that immediately brings Cactus's finest moments to mind. For those unfamiliar with Cactus, they were a band composed of incredibly talented players who had something really rare among players of such caliber: A willingness - some might even call it a desire - to play thundering, simple, dumb blues/boogie riffs with the force of a jackhammer. Though their lack of a songwriter ensured that they'd never rise much beyond obscurity, their version of "Parchman Farm" makes absolute dogmeat of Blue Cheer's bludgeoning version.
Amplified Heat, like Cactus, can play the holy fuck out of their instruments, but don't overplay. Because there's an obvious affinity for blues music at its basest level, Amplified Heat are more about finding a hot riff and riding it over a simple 12-bar groove. What makes it special and differentiates it from the hoards of bozos playing the beer-commercial bunk that blues music has become is the fact that these guys play with the force of, well, Cactus, eradicating the detritus littering the modern blues landscape. So, yeah, it's blues the same way Cactus or ZZ Top played it. Or if you need a modern example, the way Five Horse Johnson plays it.
This is the long way around saying that what Amplified Heat plays is not really blues music, it's blues-rock that avoids all of the clichés that make blues rock such a horribly boring form. Throw a singer who spent a lot of time listening to Mudhoney records in front, and you've got a can o' wallop that I can tell is probably ten times better live than on record. And I'm saying that as someone that really likes the record. Even the hidden bonus track, a cover of "Rumble," is good, and hidden bonus tracks almost always suck. Worth keeping on hand in large quantities.
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This is a band that distills everything it's ever heard into the boogie, with no
author: Michael Toland (High Bias)
Austin's other familial power trio busts loose of the River City club crawl with its national debut In For Sin. It would be easy to say the Ortiz brothers are just throwbacks to the early 70s, when arena rock was pulling itself out of the morass of blues-based proto-metal bands, but that would be denying their obvious affection for the country and blues-fed roots music force-fed every Austin musician upon arrival. Besides, the ferocity with which the Heat attacks tunes like "Wagon Wheel," "All the Aces" and the country-fried "The Gunny" is pure punk rock. This is a band that distills everything it's ever heard into the boogie, with no apologies and lots of guitar solos. In other words, rock & roll.
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author: Duncan Scott Davidson (San Francisco Bay Guardian)
The picture inside the CD case of In for Sin has Austin, Texas's Ortiz brothers, Jim, Chris, and Gian – otherwise known as Amplified Heat – looking every bit like Black Sabbath, circa 1970, minus the giant crosses. Sabbath started as an over-amplified blues act called Earth before becoming the heaviest band in history, and the blues is where A.H. take up Sab's cross. The album's title track manages to incorporate every cliché of the idiom: big-breasted women, shakin' my tree, keep me cool in the daytime, keep me warm at night, goin' down to Louisiana. It's all in there, with the possible exception of a blind guy playing slide guitar on the porch. Chris, who was once kicked out of a band for drumming "too loud," channels Bill Ward's smack-it-with-a-sledgehammer style on "Just a Junkie" (for love, of course), an otherwise mediocre 12-bar shuffle.
I don't doubt the brothers genuinely dig the blues, although their songs are most successful when they return to their stoner-rock roots, as in the hot-rod ode "Roadrunner" and the screw-me-till-I'm-broken Motörhead send-up "Wagon Wheel," where Jim takes a few swigs of Tabasco before launching into a decent Lemmy impression, à la "Love Me Like a Reptile." "Trapped," a decade-old tune from Chris's first band, Mass Abomination, takes Amplified Heat in what feels like a more natural direction: "Evil's near! There's no escape, doom ..." There it is. As Ozzy said, on that first track on Sab's first album, which obviously meant so much to these guys, "Oh no! Please, God, help me!" All in all, this is a pretty enjoyable record, but it'd sound much better in the back of a primer-gray Camaro hauling ass to a bowling alley to meet some chicks with feathered hair and tight jeans that zip in the back. Don't spill the bong water, bro!
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