Four barrels, four speeds, dual exhausts — the pervasive rumble of the American muscle car embodies a bygone era of can-do dispositions, no-dream-is-too-small spirits and fuck-with-me-you’re-fucking-with-the-best attitudes. A show of muscle is what it is; thick-necked, rippling violent potential humming along at top speeds.
Radio Birdman might’ve glammed the “455 SD,” but Delray Beach’s Hell & Hollar has the 442 market cornered. “My father sold Oldsmobiles his whole life,” guitarist and vocalist Blake Burns tells PureHoney. “I grew up around cars and my dad and I have always had a soft spot for the Olds Cutlass 442.”
Rounded out by Nate Largent on drums and backing vocals and Johnny Dusko on bass, H&H have been a’rumblin’ in South Florida for some time now and will be rolling out their own machine with a debut EP, “442,” which promises a “swinging new kind of excitement” and delivers with six tracks that blow right past the full-tank metaphor and go straight to nuclear.
The band modifies its blues and stoner-rock influences with parts from multiple genres. “We generally all have ideas we come up with at home,” Burns says of their process. “For us, the magic happens when we cut loose and just jam together. Let the universe come through our extremities. We will mic the entire room and hit record and just go off.”
Recorded at Nashville’s Lust For Tone Studio with producer Chris Condon, “442” clocks in at a little over 20 minutes, but the rubber is permanently burned onto the asphalt. Breezy in a way that creates the feeling of flight, heavy in the way a gut punch smarts and spreads to other organs, and tempered by chops and chemistry, “442” feels like an audio incarnation of the engineering care that went into its namesake.
Normally, the advice would be to not sleep on a band like this, but Hell & Hollar won’t mind if you do provided you’re just resting up for your next thrill ride — down your street, late at night, revved-up and hollerin’ like all Hell’s gotten loose.
Hell & Hollar perform July 13 at Voltaire in West Palm Beach. hellandhollar.com
~ Abel Folgar
