Categories : Country + Western, Music Reviews.
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Rating: 2/5 Released: October 18, 2005 Reviewer: Nathan Atnikov |
The Road Hammers like to drive. They like cars, trucks, and painfully extensive metaphors about life on the road. Nary a song goes by on their new self-titled album where there aren’t countless driving references, and by the time the album finally throws it into park, it’s just plain tiring.
Their new self-titled album does start with a kick. Despite breaking the all-important rule of not using your band name in a song title, I’m A Road Hammer is a great little country tune that hits all the right notes. And then those notes are repeated throughout the album, ad nauseum. Overdrive, Keep On Truckin’, and Girl on the Billboard all start to wear your patience thin, but when they hit the chorus on Heart with Four Wheel Drive, it’s officially too much.
Whereas Big & Rich were able to sing true country while still planting tongue into cheek, The Road Hammers seem too sincere to be funny, and too cheesy to be taken seriously. The Hammers have the chops, as this album is sonically flawless, but the subject matter is just too repetitive to sustain interest.
