Bang Tango
Pistol Whipped In The Bible Belt

I see Bang tango as somewhat rebellic in how they do things. It's not the sort of band where your jaw falls uncontrolled to the ground in amazement over the originality and how different everything they do is compared to everyone else's music but still. They are as far away from a band like Manowar as you possible can get because compared to the war-men it feels as if these guys don't take themselves serious at all. They just do whatever they want because it feels good when they do it like that and to them it doesn't matter at all what you or I or anyone else thinks about it because it wouldn't change the result anyway.

If you're the guy that normally gets offended, 'Pistol Whipped In The Bible Belt' might seem as a somewhat offensive title. Maybe even a bit cocky. Me, I don't think any of those things - only that the title is quite long. In fact, it's the longest album title from an album I've reviewed this year. It's the third album they've released since returning to the scene in the 00's and if it's any use for you to know, the title on this album is longer than the other two combined (but I fail to see how that information will help you in any way). The lenght of the album playing time, however, is not particularly long and ends a humble 36 minutes after it started after playing through ten songs. In 1989 this band released their most successful album so far and reached a 58th position on the American Billboard charts. A few years later they returned and reached 113th and another few years later they released their last album before disappearing for ten years, which didn't even chart. Even though I don't think they aim at returning to the charts with the albums released today but if they were to return I really think this album is their best chance so far.

Musically we get a laid back uncomplicated rock album. Despite vocalist Joe Lesté being the only member left since the 90's the band still have some of their glam veins left but today it's more a mixture of something that sounds like rockabilly meets a comedian called Brendan Burns, who is somewhat of an loud and insane lunatic. So that mixed with upbeat rock music equals this album, pretty much. Take the song Live Life as an example, where Joe Lesté (loudly) states a great interest in visiting Bang Tango to get a bowl of soup. In my opinion this is one of the worst starts of a song that I've heard in a long time and completely unnecessary. But then, I have heard worse things on album and that by bands taking themselves with greatest seriousness and somehow that makes it worse, I can accept it more by a band like this that jokes around a little but it's still annoying.

Most of the music, vocals and other elements on this album are things we've heard before. The well used elements comes as close as Joe Lesté loudly shouts about things that doesn't seem to be related to the music at all. I'm not saying that the music should be considered bad or that we're talking plagiarism or copying or in any other way stolen from someone. And I'm not saying that the music can't be original despite a feeling that we've heard it before but I think the originality is somewhat compromised on 'Pistol Whipped In The Bible Belt'. There are good songs and good ingredients but nothing really new and this is the biggest minus with this album along with the vocals of Joe Lesté. The music is alright and how they play as well but take a song like the ballad Have You Seen Her which felt so familiar to me that I had to search thoroughly if it was a cover or not, but despite the Chi-Lites hit-single from 1971 with the same name it turned out it wasn't. But the song is a very good song!

So… where do we find Bang Tango and their 'Pistol Whipped In The Bible Belt'? I think we find it exactly where I just said - as a good album with good songs but with songs that feels so much like we've heard them before that we almost start to search after the originals and compare them, despite that there are none. This is the best Bang Tango album I've heard since returning to the scene and an album I really can't see why you shouldn't appreciate. It have a decent life-span and have plenty of nice elements but despite all of this I can't say I see this album getting too much time in either yours or mine music players. The sentence is that Bang Tango makes soup that tastes a bit too much like other soups so I see no reason to start searching for their soup corner, despite it's pretty good.