The Quill- Hooray! It’s a Death Trip (SPV)

It takes about 15 seconds for the first cowbell to kick in on the Quill’s epic new album, the awesomely named “Hooray! It’s a Deathtrip”. Make no mistake about it, we have left the 21st century to roil in it’s own hopeless disorder, and we are now cruising at dizzying speeds in yellow striped Camaros, draped in ill-fitting BOC tour shirts and wondering where all the Farrah girls are. That’s right, the 70’s. You’ve been there before, I’m sure. I am not sure, however, that you’ve ever been this fully immersed in the gasoline stink of that righteous, volatile era, unless you’ve actually been there. The Quill are almost fuckin’ magical, they do this retrogressive bit so well. I am instantly transported back to the summer of ’78, a 9 year old Sleazegrinder sneaking out to the too-dark park, where the wild n’ wooly teenagers hung out, watching the make-out scenes and the beer guzzling and pot smoking and listening to all that sweet, heavy rock and roll pouring out of parked car radios from a safe distance, and thinking, “Someday, that’s gonna be me feelin’ up that cheap blonde hussy in the skin-tight white bellbottoms, while Bad Company punches holes in the night sky.” Of course, by the time I was that age, it was the late 80s, and the radio had degenerated into third-rate glam metal, and hussies no longer wore bellbottoms, but you know what I mean. The Quill are every one of those FM thundercracking arena rock bands all rolled into one- everything from the sweeping, orchestral sprawl of Led Zep to the streetboogie crunch of BTO to the hammer-fisted heavy prog of Deep Purple to the swelter metal of Blue Oyster Cult. And unlike the prancing unitard screech of the Darkness, there is no backwards smirk to the Quill’s single-minded mission, no regrettable Spinal Tap moments (well, ok, maybe the sitar isn’t the greatest idea), just sheer hard rock bombast that really doesn’t care if it’s supposed to be informed of punk rock, or post-rock, or nu-anything. It does not sound dated, it sounds timeless. Grand Funk would have killed to make this record, but hell, so would’ve Raging Slab, or Soundgarden. I’m not even gonna get into what’s what here- I could go on for another 500 words just on the guitar solo in the massive “American Powder” – so just take my word for it. As far as 70’s Power Rock goes, you’d actually have to go back thirty years to find a record as good as this one. Simply amazing.