BACKYARD BABIES - Total 13

Artist:  Backyard Babies

Album: Total 13

Year:  1998

Genre:  Rock ‘N Roll

This album is blood - and guts – and sweat.  It’s glam - it’s punk - it’s 100% attitude.  This is Rock ‘N Roll.  It’s the record every hard rock fanatic had been waiting for since Appetite For Destruction.  The best elements of New York Dolls, GNR, Sex Pistols, Hanoi Rocks, The Damned, MC5, etc., etc. etc. are all here.  If this album played like a scene in a movie, it would drink all Motley Crue’s whiskey while flipping them off, slap 1978 David Lee Roth and steal his girlfriend, then furiously skid away in a 1964 Impala SS with the top down blasting “If You Want Blood” as a city is left to perish in flames. 

Ok…maybe that’s a little much, but you get a picture of the bombastic sound that erupts from the speakers as soon as the needle hits the groove.  I honestly think this was the record that could’ve and should’ve saved rock and roll and revived its popularity to a once gigantic, and well-earned status.  Rock hasn’t been alive since the early 90s and laugh as you may, when the last of the hair metal bands drown in the wake of changing times and the alternative wave, so did a large majority of true rock and roll fans.  Yes, many of the relics of the 70s and 80s still make their presence known, but please tell me what pure rock and roll band owns the world like AC/DC, Boston, Alice Cooper, Kiss, Aerosmith, etc., etc., etc. did?  Don’t say “Foo Fighters.”  It’s not the same.  Rock has been hanging on life support with the long-standing, arena-filling bands still waving their aging, tattered flags, and newer bands keeping club-size to 3,000 seat venues filled with the rebellion that was once the most parent-feared music in the land.  Why did this happen?  Lack of airplay?  Zero MTV support?  Expansion of musical tastes?  Possibly.  Maybe it's that record labels refuse to nurture and grow bands like they used to because if you don't have an instant hit you're worth nothing to them.  Whatever the reason, it keeps bands such as Backyard Babies at a nominal level of popularity instead of making them the next arena touring band.

I’m sorry to keep referencing it, but listening to Total 13 reminds me my initial experience with Appetite For Destruction.  “AFD” brought excitement back into a genre which, by any standard, was cold and stiff.  People love to say Nirvana killed the hair bands of the 80s, but I really believe it was Guns ‘N Roses with their don’t-give-a-fuck, street level attitude and excellent songs that weren’t just hiding pop music under distortion, hairspray and lipstick.  Nirvana threw the dirt in the grave dug by GNR.

It’s apparent on Total 13 that there were some burgeoning rockers in Sweden that studied the blueprint established by GNR and stayed true to the roots that made rock what it was.  When you add in the style of hard-living, overly tattooed, gypsy glam punks, you’ve got the complete package with Backyard Babies.  They achieved the daunting task of sounding like a stripped down rock band while actually playing much, much more than meets the ear upon a first listen.  It’s true talent that can make songs sound like you’re setting your instruments aflame, but, in reality, the band is playing with skill and creativity.  There are plenty of leads that swagger all over the diesel-fueled riffs with the bass taking turns driving the songs along and having some fun noodling away under the massive amounts of distortion.  You can tell the drummer is playing with the intent of pushing the songs to their hilt.  He purposely isn’t sitting back in the pocket and forces the rest of guys to play catch up with him.  The vocals are a page out of 1992 Social Distortion sans the lazy drawl Mr. Ness perpetrated from time to time.  The Babies are at their best when moving at break-neck speeds which lets their obvious spiked hair and safety pin side shine through, but the winner on this album is the bulldozing “Highlights.”  It’s a song that should’ve been ripping up FM rock stations everywhere giving an absolutely necessary defibrillator jolt to rock ‘n roll.  The Babies did it right on Total 13..  If you haven’t already gotten the hint, get this record.

Listen to "Highlights" here