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Ok, so it’s been seven months since ATP actually released Fulton Hill, but better late than never, right? Besides, it’s better that you get good and primed for this one, ‘cause it once it hits you, it’ll likely knock you back a few months anyway.

ATP, who, interestingly enough, reside in Virginia and not Alabama, really are the true masters of down home, backwoods, blue collar, stoner rock, with their thunder boogie blues and biker metal mayhem crowding every dusty road and shady saloon from the Bayou on down to the Keys. I saw these cats a few months back when they rolled through my town and I was actually scared, ya know? It was like the Hell’s Angels had descended on me and put on John Deere hats for jokes. The show was raw and tore me the fuck apart, so naturally I garnered a liking for ATP, even though I might have to cross to the other side of the tracks to understand them at all. But that’s cool, I like adventures.

Strangely, Fulton Hill is an adventure, far more intricate and precise then I ever would have imagined. John Weils’ (aka Throckmorton) vocals run the gamut, from a raspy croon to a grizzly bear growl, and the music switches from steely acoustics to cinder block riffage at will. Half the album’s a tribute to the working class in growling, mud-slinging, motor madness – songs like Wage Slave, Bear Baiting, and Sociopath Shitlist crawl and toil like some sort of Icelandic death march set to, like, a Soil nu-grind. But where things really start to get interesting is when the other half of the album comes slithering out of the speakers like angry 80s power ballads laced with Allman Brothers jangle. The songs Three Stars, Alone Again, and Do Not are poignant, moody, and full o’ class, which almost elevates ATP out of the stoner-doom-rock category and into something much more, hmmm…respected and refined? But if that scares you a bit, don’t worry. It says in the liner notes that ‘over 900 cans of beer were consumed during the making of this album’ and the album’s last song, the 14 minute, smoothly-yet-grudgingly flowing opus, Struggle for Balance, is truly a stoner’s paradise. As ATP drummer Bryan Cox says, ‘Don’t know if you get high or not, but Struggling for Balance is pretty cool like that!’ So take the next seven months to truly ingest this one, you dirty bastard. ________________________________________________________

–Jeff Warren