wow. very good. reminiscent of big business and acid king. very good cd it may be the next one i buy.

The White Stripes of metal? That was my first thought as I opened up my copy of "The Drunken Masters," the latest album by the Cincinnati band Croatan, and discovered that the 'group' was only a duo – a guitarist and a drummer, male and female, and that's it. Of course, they sound nothing like the aforementioned retro-rock duo. But rare indeed is the two-person band... and even rarer is the two-person band that manages to remain diverse, dynamic, and interesting for more than a song or two. Yet Croatan have been writing and recording music for ten years or more, and their current material is some of the most intriguing 'metal' I've heard in a while. Assuming this is a metal album, of course. The press material accompanying "The Drunken Masters" describes Croatan as "thrash, doom, crust, and noise [rolled] all together." But in my opinion, there is far more punk here than anything else. Which is all fine and dandy, since punk is one of my favorite styles of music. Guitarist Jenny provides vocals as well as strings, resulting in more than a few similarities to female-fronted punk bands such as Tilt, Naked Aggression, or some of No More's material. Punk is present in the less-than-thrash up-tempo adrenaline-soaked riffs, fun-loving attitude, gratuitous cursing, and in the occasional politically-charged diatribes ("Four Letter Word for Hypocrite," for example). Melodies are almost always major chords and scales instead of minor chords. And while I wouldn't go so far as to call this music 'happy,' it is certainly a far cry from the darkness and despondency of your average descendent of Black Sabbath or Slayer. There's still plenty of metal here, though. Oh, most definitely metal. From the blast beat that almost brings "Evil Incarnate" to a close, to the head-slamming crunch riffs of "Pissing Contest," to thunderous percussion and distortion is so thick, you won't find yourself looking for a bass guitar anywhere, there's enough heaviness in Croatan to satisfy all but the here there be metal, without a doubt. "Circle of Greed" is especially doomy... at least, most of the time. And so on. And then there's the title track of this album, a song so psychedelically bizarre, it just had to be mentioned in a paragraph unto itself. Metal? Punk? Good music is good music! And Croatan's "The Drunken Masters" is thoroughly enjoyable, from beginning to end. It's zany, creative, fun to listen to, and quite unlike anything I have listened to in a while. It's heavy enough to appeal to metal fans, wacky enough to fit the needs of comedy punk aficionados, and good enough to become beloved by any open-minded fan of either genre. Unique smile-forming punk metal with comedic and political leanings... Croatan are difficult to pin down, but oh so entertaining.

You probably saw a couple mentions of this band a few months ago with their demo/EP and the "Sonic Warfare" compilation I reviewed. This duo from Cincinnati offers this 12-track mentally disturbing release that is genre-defying and has some interesting female vocals from Jenny (think of 45 Grave). The comprehension part is the band's mixture of Punk, Goth, Hardcore, Death and Crust with some Doom and Aggro to boot. Every song has it's own set of fingerprints and even some comedy here and there with the lyrics and/or song titles. It's only 35 minutes but it's enigmatic as hell and beyond the norm giving it total originality. They offer everything other than what you would expect.