By Gruesome Greg
If I’ve ever seen a band name that screamed southern rock, it would hafta be Gideon Smith & the Dixie Damned. You’d get the feeling that if someone screamed “Free Bird!” at one of their concerts, they’d actually play it. Alas, “Black Fire” is a promising opener that brings Diablo Red to mind, but from there things get kinda weird.
“South” is a gloomy, gothic dirge, Gideon going all Danzig/Peter Steele on us. “Love of the Vampire,” as the title suggests, is more of the same, albeit more horror punk than goth. I actually kinda like their take on the Saint Vitus classic “I Bleed Black”—the riffs and tone are pretty true to form, although the solo sounds nothing like Dave Chandler. But Gideon’s gothic vocals go great with this tune, I gotta say, giving it that extra fear factor.
Elsewhere, I’m not really feeling the combination of vaguely southern riffs and deep-voiced goth metal vocals. Not quite what I expected, sort of a subpar Danzig I with a coupla country-fried tunes tacked on to the end. Sounds like Gideon and co. probably wouldn’t play “Free Bird” after all, but they might take ya up on “Black No. 1”…
(Small Stone)
