Molly Hatchet: Silent Reign Of Heroes

Every style of popular music gets to have a comeback sooner or later, and old-fashioned, guitar-rockin', Skynyrd- and Allmans-inspired, Confederate-flag-sporting Southern rock has been increasingly visible in recent years. Allman and company still do well, while Skynyrd recently put out a live album on the lucrative old-timer's-graveyard label CMC International. CMC also just released Silent Reign Of Heroes, a new album by the Florida-based county-fair staple Molly Hatchet. And why not There's still a huge audience for Southern rock, and Molly Hatchet has been one of its best-known purveyors for more than two decades, though guitarist Bobby Ingram is now its only original member. But, boy, does Silent Reign Of Heroes stink. It's a lumbering, dreary, terrible wreck, filled with generic riffs, rote performances, and lyrics like, "How many times must good men die / How many tears will the children cry / Till we suffer no more sadness / Stop the madness / Oh, stop the madness." Even when Molly Hatchet cuts loose and tries to have fun, as on "Miss Saturday Night," the results sound forced and joyless. ("Junk Yard Dawg" is the only track here that could even be rescued by a spirited live performance.) You'd think Molly Hatchet would have grown a sense of humor by now—if the hilarious, viking-themed cover art had been intended as a joke, it'd be a lot different—but it hasn't, and that's too bad. Fortunately, the Chicago group Mustache out-Molly Hatchets Molly Hatchet, and obviously has a blast in the process. The group's self-titled debut is a raunchy masterpiece of over-the-top Southern-rock excess, delivered with a Killdozer growl and played with sloppy aggressiveness (or is that aggressive sloppiness) by six hairy, tattoo-intensive guys. It's inspired by Molly Hatchet, among others, but it's so much more fun, it's amazing. Packaged as if it were recorded live before a huge, screaming arena crowd—there's a ton of great between-song banter—Mustache is full of riotous anthems, from "Hungry For A Ride" (with its chorus of "Ride! Ride! Ride! Mustache ride!") to the anti-New York anthem "New York City," to "Ozark Mountain Momma," which is every bit as goddamn funny as it sounds. The album gets a bit redundant after a while, but you still need to own it. (Beluga Records, P.O. Box 146751, Chicago, IL 60614-6751)