BUFFALO PLAYED AUSSIE ROCK HEAVY METAL STYLE
Buffalo were anything but glam rock, which bands like Sherbet, the Skyhooks and Hush made very fashionable in Australia by the time the mid 70`s had come around, with a helping hand with the advent of the TV show Countdown.
They were what you would call a heavy metal pub rock band, on their second and third albums anyway. By the time the fourth album of their`s come out, complete with management dictated changes to the band`s lineup to give it a more `commercial edge`, gone was the Black Sabbath inspired spitfire
riffs which fueled the third album, and the one that I`m about to review, called `Only Want You For Your Body`.
riffs which fueled the third album, and the one that I`m about to review, called `Only Want You For Your Body`.
I haven`t had the opportunity to hear the second album`Volcanic Love` as yet, so I can only tell you what I have read about it in the sleeve of this album, basically it was good studio jam match practice for OWYFYB, albeit not quite as refined and song based.
Buffalo released five albums in total from the early to late 70`s, and from what I have read, these two albums is what defined Buffalo artistically.
The band, on this and the two albums that proceded it, was a four piece, made up of vocalist Dave Tice, guitarist John Baxter, bass guitarist Peter Wells and Jimmy Economou on drums.
Wells would end up joining Rose Tattoo by the decades end after Buffalo broke up. The album only has seven songs on it, but that`s probably a good thing, because it means it doesn`t have three fillers just to fill up space to make it a customary ten song album, like is and was very fashionable back then.
The song titles leave nothing to the imagination, and you certainly know you`re
dealing with a bunch of egotistical macho aussie rockers in the year 1975, long before political correctness came along.
dealing with a bunch of egotistical macho aussie rockers in the year 1975, long before political correctness came along.
The album cover is even less tactful, it features a very unsexy looking woman shackled to a torture rack, while the back cover featured the band members standing over the torture rack minus Miss Piggy, with vocalist Tice dressed in a semi-sado outfit with a whip in one hand.
Not for the faint hearted, and only for those with a strong gut. Song number one sets a `what you see is what you get theme`
for the whole album, it`s called `I`m a Skirt Lifter, Not a Shirt Raiser`.
The song ends with a girl giggling - what was Dave up to I wonder? The second tune `I`m Comin On` is a solid riff fest warm up for what is to follow.
The song `Dune Messiah` is the best heavy metal song that ever come out of Australia, that is my call. It is Buffalo`s version of Black Sabbath`s `Snowblind`.
Aussie pub rock never got meatier than this. `Stay With Me` reverts back to a more basic riff formula like track number two, but the
intensity of the moment is still very much there.
intensity of the moment is still very much there.
`What`s Going On` is a monumentally heavy song for an aussie act as well, with Tice sounding so much like Ozzy Osbourne to the point of amusement.
The album's tour de force, besides the timeless classic `Dune Messiah, would probably have to be song number six, `Kings Cross Ladies`, which sums up the seedy lifestyles of the band members and what they got up to in the escort capital of Australia.
The album ends off with `United Nations`, which is just as proto-punk as anything Iggy Pop cooked up around the same time.
Buffalo might have just been a bunch of loud and clumsy rockers, but they had some rogue charm, and this album certainly
deserves some recognition that it never got for inspiring a lot of aussie pub rock bands to form in the years after they called it a day.
deserves some recognition that it never got for inspiring a lot of aussie pub rock bands to form in the years after they called it a day.
Buffalo wouldn`t buckle to commercial pressure from their record company, the fact that their fourth and fifth album flopped would suggest their record company got it wrong by interfering and forcing the band to give guitarist John Baxter the bullet to make the band a poppy cock sugar coated glam band, just to make it fit in with the prevailing music trends of the time.
Australia lost its very first heavy metal band almost as quickly as it had found it.
You won't believe this , but I bought OWYFYB on vinyl in early '76 and said to my band mates ( yep school boy stuff) "this is the shit"
ReplyDeleteWe were doing poor man's renditions of some Sabbath stuff, Ted nugent, Necktar, Hawkwind, etc, so you see it fitted pretty well right.
But unfortunately it was local Aussie stuff, it was pub band stuff, it was not for local radio airplay and it was to hard for most places if you wanted gigs, so we played some Status Quo instead, we already had a repetoir of hard unpopular stuff to play when the crowd was drunk enough to let us play stuff we wanted to rather than popular R&R.
Of course we also slipped in a bit of Chain stuff, . . . I reckon you' gonna probably going to do a post on them sometime soon anyway, so here's a prompt.