Hot. Hard. Teutonic.  "No Frills" is the album busted out by Aussie pub rock devotees HARDBONE (2006) from Hamburg, Germany. One listen thru and I am sold, these guys deal the straight stuff, the stuff that makes your head bob up and down and your beer reflex kick like an ornery mule. You may think you have heard this all before - and you have, but the lads put a twist on the familiar riffs and grooves of AC/DC architecture to make this fresh and add some across the board excitement on the Whiskey and Holy Water studio production - not one complaint have I about anything on this disc.

Now its time to roll the dice ... 'Bang Goes the Money' comes in on a braided romping riff-fest by Sebastian and Tommy that could start a wild bushfire. Tim Dammann sounds like a perfect cross of Brian Johnson and Bon Scott with a bit of bellow and growl like Ronnie Van Zant used to do, dropping his vocals on ground zero ... just a good kick in the nuts ... 'Off the Beaten Track' continues to wind up your inner speed freak with a reach-around percussive guitar riff rubbing one out for measure. 'Too Hot' brings the rock'n'roll to a mad boil and let's the love steam proper ... I love it baby, we gonna fly, let's go ... 'A Man in His Prime' shows a sliver of Lynyrd Skynyrd along with the barefaced "Let There Be Rock" and "High Voltage" rip-snorter production flavors we get here on this release - no dog's breakfast of grooves ... no talking remains ... 'Breaking Chains' is a pulse popping take me out to the races number. 'To Hell' goes into a less amped and aped up gear ... they tell you, you gotta make the best of it ... To Hell We Ride ... krikey, these blokes must be somewhere in the same locked down and quarantined 'hood as I am.

'Less Talk, Less Bull' is all that ... I can't stand this bullshit anymore ...shaddup ¡! ... 'Boys Night Out' ... cuts to the heart of the matter with insight ... my mind is weak and the flesh is too ... yea, verily my brothers and nice little bass lick by Tim Schwarz ... raise your fist, raise your glass, raise your voice and say, I want my rock'n'roll life back ... 'Back in the Day' is a reflective little ditty that takes me back, far back to last year when I was spending my newspaper route money on pussy, a bag of bush weed and a 6 pack of bubbles; now that I is a full-grown man I have done cut out the weed but the rock and roll animal remains. 'Beastlike' washes the wretchedness of the previous shanty from my memory and shows off more righteous gorilla guitar rhythms ... these are some coconut crackin' bloody tight grooves.

If you play it straight up, Australian Pub Rock is limited within the idiom pretty much like the Blues. Where the rubber meets the road is in the band coherence and songs. Simple though they may be in structure, the band needs to play it bonza to lift it above the ordinary. The band has to have massive groove and swing that takes your breath away - HARDBONE succeeds mightily. It always helps to have shooting star musicians with swagger and technical ability and on "No Frills" that slot is filled by Tim Dammann. While he went on down to Ronnie and Donnie Van Zant vocal dominion on earlier releases, on this release he is bang-on both Brian and Bon, with the rest of the band hanging, banging and giving us a fair suck of the rock'n'roll sauce bottle. These songs and the performance on "No Frills" kick ass. Jolly good show mates ¡!
You rock and roll like a rock and rolly thing. I say you're a weedy roo, HARDBONE, and you can call me the dani bandolier Spotify playlist if it isn't so...

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/272H3UBARsuksY3BqU0CzP?si=UzHGykMISEWJuc4QMs2aqg