Glurp, groan, grunt, gobble-gobble, gack-a-yack, goddamn, glib-globben-glubben-glibber-gok…
I’m sick to my stomach as Life… the Best Game in Town’s ninth track “Barn Burner” hits the speakers; it feels like I’ve been running around town drinking beer for a few hours in the middle of a heatwave, soaking my beer-belly-accommodating shirt (ZZ Top tee of course, best fuckin’ band ever) with sweat and letting my porn-star hair flap above my sweet ’70s headband.
And maybe I have been…that’s fer me ta know and yew ta find out. Point is, Harvey Milk have an adventurous spirit, one much too restless for the mores of the era. At times their songs swan-dive with the guitar crunch of Seattle metal gods like Botch and Ambitious Career Woman, but aside from a soft moment or two, HM are much, much murkier in their scope than the above-mentioned, indebted to The Melvins and Sabbath and Blue Cheer more than anything. Mind yew, they were stepping on necks and rockin’ the bass-heavy crunch-crunch when those kids in Big Business were but a gleam in some sheep’s eye.
So what’s it to ya, anyways? If you didn’t pay attention to ol’ HARvey back in the mid- to late-’90s — when they were preet-much the only heavy-deavy band in Athens, GA — why would you now? What’s that? Hydra’s Head? Well I don’t really know what you mean by that, and I’m gonna act tuff until I figure out what’s goin’ on.
Until then, feel free to set yeself down for a spell and take in the stinky Southern smell of Harvey Milk. All jokins aside, this record is downright GNARLY despite its hang-ups, impossible to wash from the soul and probably the thickest, grittiest substance you ever did see; call it the oil slick of that-there doom-/fuzz-/stoner-rock explosion.