Band : Gun Barrel

Album title : Outlaw Invasion

Label : Limb Music Products

Distributor : Suburban

Release date : 11/04/2008

Release : CD

Gee, has it really been almost 3 ½ years since Gun Barrel 's previous album Bombard Your Soul (review posted 18/10/2005, still available for fact-finding details on the band's history)?

Yeah well, they've been touring relentlessly (sharing bills with the likes of Eternal Reign , Jon Oliva's Pain , Mystic Prophecy , Perzonal War , Rage , R-Vision , Tankard , and Zeltinger ) throughout that period, even happy to play an acoustic set at an autograph session in their hometown's Saturn record store (their home town being Koln ). Meanwhile some of the guys apparently felt more comfortable performning under an asumed name rather than the ones given 'em through parental lineage, and therefore singer Guido Feldhausen (who'd already taken on the surname of Xaver ) will now be known as Xaver Drexler , and bassist Holger Schultz (whom also had a surname with Tomcat ) is now to be addressed as Tomcat Klingten . The two other band members (guitarist Rolf Tanzius and drummer Toni Pinciroli ) luckily did not feel a need for such trivialities.

No trivialities however can be found in the new Rock 'n' Roll Metal album by the band, which got recorded at Hamburg's Impuls Studios and was then given a splattering mastering by Tommy Hansen at his Danish Jailhouse Studios . Overall quite driven, the band occasionally take the foot off the trottle for a somewhat calmer track, thus giving room (for instance) to the anthemic "Brother To Brother" . "M.I.L.F." (short for "Mothers I'd Like to Fuck" – how naughty, eh?) may be somewhat more driven but is equally as anthemic, and it's suggested that the track may well grow to be one of the band's hymns. Even calmer than the atmosphere in those two songs is the emotionally catchy and balladesque opening of "Wanted Man" , a track which then comes to live in an explosive ending. But for the most part the songs are quite up-tempo or energized, with great thumping bass and rock-steady drumming making sure of the solid foundation on which the guitarist can bring his complementary musical colouring. Soundwize, you could put it that this German band moves in the circles of the likes of AC/DC , Rose Tattoo , and Motörhead , but with a flair of its own...which makes this act the perfect road companion to any band which is really out there to Rock out!

For your aural testing of this band through the Internet, I'm afraid myspace.com/yourgunbarrel only displays 4 tracks off their previous album at the moment. Something which may well change in the near future, but for the time being you'll have to be content with that (rather representative, after all) foursome of songs.

85/100

Tony.