If we are, it's as easy to say with a wave of a hand that Milwaukee's Slow Walker are in the process of scaling a mountain of contaminated soil to plant a grease stained flannel flag at it's peak. Fuzz-n-Wah are used brazenly, a fat bass bottom and drums with a particular boom waste no time in getting right down business with opening track, "Dog Meat", sounding like it should be used for the soundtrack for a film of nitro burning funny cars bursting in to actual flames.
Listening to the album though the thing is with these guys, unlike, say, the Ramones Jr. bands that became a bane some time ago, the band doesn't stick straight to a grunge template. They dig deeper to find out where the sound they're going for got its sound from as well as they places it has went since and, all the while, avoiding the plastic alternative rock ghettos.
"Too Much" takes a Black Lips bounce and injects it with David Allan practicing speed metal riffing, the hazy day feeling of "Never Coming Back" is something like Feelies stripping the Shocking Blues "Venus" of all its proto-prog jazz adornments and making things much straight forward as a result and songs like "Sight In Mind" and "Stale Heat" have a backstreet proto-metal/hesher punk clobbering groove that should be cranking from a weed dealer's El Camino.
Throw in some summer stroll feelings on "Dawn At Sunrise" and "Losing It" along sounding like Spacemen 3 being locked in a closet with some Kyuss albums on "Bathroom Tile" and you've got a meal almost as well balanced as Mudhoney's finest hour Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge.
A couple of my Milwaukee bud's (who have some pretty good bands themselves) have told me this is the favorite band from town (and not just because they did a Saints tribute set last Halloween.) Jamming the album a bunch of times now I have no reason to doubt them.
https://slowwalker.bandcamp.com
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