5 out of 5
This right here is perfect garage punk rock & roll. It’s got the swagger and the snarl, it’s got the slash and precision of switchblade-wielding robots, and it’s got lines like “Let’s be best friends on your floor” and tongue-firmly-in-cheek song titles like “I Wanna Deadbeat You,” “Open Your Legs” and “Panther In Crime.” Just like front-man John Reis’s beloved “band who invented Rock n Roll,” Rocket From the Crypt, The Night Marchers owe just as much (if not more) to 50s rockabilly attitude & 60s “Nuggets” sounds as they do to more modern punk pursuers, and this record really actually does sound a lot like RFTC just without the horns. In fact, Reis is even here going by his RFTC handle, Speedo. But where another modern band with a foot firmly planted in the past, the Bronx, are dirty and disheveled, all torn jeans and old punk t-shirts (and maybe still a little drunk from the night before), the Marchers are a James Bond (or an early-Elvis)-like suave: slicked back, sensuous, and never without a drink in hand, though never really drunk. Reis & Co. are also not quite as Euro-perfect as a band like the Hives, and that’s not meant in the slightest as a jab. One of the best tracks on the album, in fact, “Branded,” is pure American West, a gypsy-cowbilly shuffle with a little bit of menace – 
imagine Yul Brenner’s character in Westworld singing a song of love and devotion. And “Open Your Legs” is a double-Elvis-entendre, with Sullivan Show hip-shaking rhythm amped to skate punk speeds. And “You’ve Got the Nerve,” is Rolling Stones cock-of-the-walk blues rock, but where Jagger sang about having a woman under his thumb, Speedo sings “You’ve got nerve/ Don’t cut me loose/ You’ve got nerve/ And I want the abuse.” Now if only Martin Scorcese would obsess over The Night Marchers…
=james
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