The title track and opener is but an introduction, a minute of meaty percussion and rocking bass that launches immediately into 'Carion' (sic) comes on like Alice in Chains downing shots with Queens of the Stone Age with a big, grungy bass / drums / guitar grind, the sound completed with a drawling, boozy vocal with no shortage of grit and bourbon. 'Carion' is sung to sound like 'Carry On' and is a gritty chugging rawk-out. It's a promising start, and sets the tone for much of the rest of the album. There's plenty of swagger and boogie, and if you want guitar heavy country-blues-rock that's dirty and grainy, you could do a lot worse than 'Callous.' It sets the tone for much of the album, a collection of stomping whiskey-soaked, riff-haulin' rock. For the most part, it lurches and lumbers along nicely and delivers the kind of 'psychedelic groove rock' the band promise.
'Zwaggie' is rather weak, being a stripped back Led Zep inspired chug that just too standard and predictable to lift it out of the mires of pub rock. Third-rate Led Zeppelin derivations that are just painfully hoary and decidedly uncool. The whole blustery strutting rock posturing's been done to death, and it's 2010, for goodness' sake. Still, the no-messin' road-trippin' straight up rock 'n' roll of '14 & Under' and 'Cheer' makes up for such pedestrian indulgences, the latter boasting a slowed down sludge riff that could have been lifted from a Melvins album (until they spoil it rather in the last minute with a cock-rockin' solo that's most unnecessary, but hey ho).
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Crimson Roots are definitely at their best when knocking out crushing power chords and rocking full-throttle, as on 'Cheer', and the closer, 'At Play in the Fields of the Lord' is a seven-minute psych-sludge workout that's not only a superb overdriven, overloading finale, but probably worth the album's purchase price on its own.
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