The Royal Hounds NYC God Bless The Royal Hounds LP
One of my not-so-favorite musical genres is Oi!-pop… Popoye? Don’t know, but call it what you like, when you start mixing the QUEERS with the 4-SKINS, I’m headed to the door. COCK SPARRER can pull it off, but it took them a long time to grow on me with every song sounding like a drunken Christmas carol sung by a muppet. The ROYAL HOUNDS NYC do not sound like any of the aforementioned bands. To give them credit, they do a nice job of mixing Oi! with Too Tough to Die-era RAMONES or even the DICTATORS, which comes to an apex with the song “I Just Wanna Live This Way”—really the highlight for me here. The singer has a nice, gruff vocal range in a class with Carl from the TEMPLARS, Lemmy and Handsome Dick. The super flanged-out guitar (maybe a nod to the TEMPLARS) endlessly soloing gets grating after a while and I am left dreading the possibility of any more Popoye records heading my way.