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ROUTE 66 KILLERS S/T Grave Wax __________________________________________________ |
 The
Route 66 Killers are a quartet of wodka
slurpin’ Russkies who escaped from a Gulag in Siberia by furiously
burrowing due south with wooden spoons. Somehow, they managed to end up in
the Arizona desert, which must have come as quite a culture shock for ‘em.
Probably for the locals, too. As you can imagine, when you mix Russians
with the great southwest, it’s only a matter of time before they form a
surf band, and here are the creepy-crawly results. The R66 Killahs eschew
the endless Count Yorga soundbites and werewolf howls usually littered
throughout gimmicky modern horror-surf records, and just let the riffs
roll like big, black waves of summertime gloom until you’re half-drowned
in the spooky, blood-soaked super-fuzz. Even with the shock-show titles (“Monsturbation”,
“Death, Death, Death”, “Ghoul Tango”), there’s a remarkable restraint in
these vintage-sounding instrumentals, with just subtle hints of Flamenco
guitar or hopped-up ‘billy rhythms to spice the stew. They are also
infused with this very strange sort of melancholy, which is entirely the point, but it’s still pretty funny that a buncha phony Russians reusing 40
year old Ventures riffs can evoke more of a somber mood than half those
corpse-painted goons in Norway who, after all, have actually KILLED people. The Route 66 Killers may not be the sickest surfers of ‘em all,
but they’d sound awesome playing at Davey Allan’s funeral.
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-Sleazegrinder |