Gun Club, The

Ever have one of those days were you've felt just like an Elvis from Hell? No? Well Jeffrey Lee Peirce, lead singer of The Gun Club certainly has. The Gun Club is not a famous band in the traditional sense, they never received the popularity of Queen, the critical reception of Zeppelin, or the praise from the mainstream media of Pink Floyd, but looking back I think Peirce would have wanted it that way. The Gun Club combined two genres in a way that had never been done before, and those are hardcore punk and traditional blues music. Tracks from their opus and first release Fire Of Love range from the fast power cords of Sex Beat to the slow blues shuffle of Jack On Fire. The band that they could perhaps be the most compared to are the Meat Puppets, who combined country music and hardcore punk, but the Gun Club has something that the Meat Puppets do not; that is their seedy depiction of the Los Angeles underbelly. Peirce’s songs tell dark and disheartening tales of lust, murder, and drugs, the latter of which eventual caused his early death. If you are ever looking for something new to listen too, and aren’t too afraid to hear songs that sound like they should be sung by a dying homeless man without any teeth that happens to be an awesome musician, than look no further.