The Evil Powers Of Rock'n'Roll

Liquor, women, drugs and killing. This is how the Supersuckers sum up the subject matter of their songs. Comprising a singer called Eddie Spaghetti, guitarist Dan 'Thunder' Bolton and a personage known as The Dancing Eagle on drums, expect a band who don't take themselves all that seriously. Supersuckers do, however, seem quite determined to live up to their self-proclaimed role as America's greatest living rock band.

With songs such as 'I Want The Drugs', 'Gone Gamblin'' and 'Dead Meat', they certainly claim to walk the walk of bar-room brawls, booze, whores, dirt roads and dead ends. They throw in every rock 'n' roll cliche there is, while somehow managing not to get too Wayne's World on us (apart from a press release which proudly states that "if it weren't for Sa-tan, the Suckers wouldn't have no tan at all.")

As rough as they look on the sleeve pictures, the non-stop lifestyle of drinking and hellraising this album presents seems a touch too studied to be the genuine article. It wouldn't surprise me if, behind all the rock posturing, these 'renowned hedonistic monsters' were actually members of the pipe-and-slippers brigade in the privacy of their own trailer-park homes.

Even if it is just a glorious fiction, Supersucker's squealing riffs are perfect for those prone to playing a bit of air-guitar. Tempted though I am to label them Guns n' Roses without the artistic pretensions, they are much better than that, with a punk aspect keeping the songs short and sharp and country influences adding a bit of depth (they recorded a track with Willie Nelson for his painfully-titled tribute album Twisted Willie in 1995.)

The Supersuckers - not quite a malign force to be reckoned with, just good clean fun.