Amplified Heat bypasses all the trials and tribulations of rock evolution for the last 30 years or so and makes everything old sound new again. Or maybe they’ve realized that just because it was old, it wasn’t broken.  Their roots are blues and boogie, and they branch out with a love for classic rock n’ roll and early hard rock The end result is cocky, bluesy rock n’ roll music that’s more retro than a safari-suited bureaucrat pawing through a photo essay about the Rajneesh ashram in The Illustrated Weekly Of India while perched on the backseat of a white Ambassador. Of course, there are lots of bands playing that retro blues rock card right now, but really picking up more from trendy indie rock and post-grunge. Amplified Head aren’t like that. Their musicianship is sweaty and integral, and their influences are, at the risk of sounding bombastic, pure and true.


From the Hendrix/Billy Gibbon worshipping grooves and the scorching bursts of pentatonic wailing to the garage rock rhythms and vocals, Amplified Heat make it sound like it’s circa 1968, somewhere in a smoky, sweaty dive where hippies wilt, folkies melt and only greasy rock n’ rollers with blues in their soul will prevail. Standouts include the strutting insolence and groove of ‘Tough Guy’, the declaration of purpose on ‘What Went Wrong’, with its reverb-soaked garage-fried vocals, the mellowish ‘She Drank The Wine’, ‘Moonshine’, a song that you won’t believe wasn’t first recorded when the band members were only babies, or glimmers in their parents’ eyes, ‘Through And Through’, with its wailing freakout jams, and ‘Amplified Boogie’, a scorching instrumental workout that does everything the title suggests.


Don’t come to this album looking for subtlety or the unexpected. This is unreconstructed boogie stomp, unabashed and loud. How do you like the sound of that? I thought so…

Year of Release: 2007

Label: Arclight Records