Outlaw Order is a new band featuring 4 of the 5 members of legendary New Orleans sludge crew Eyehategod. With the entire band apart from Jimmy Bower coming together, Outlaw Order has been riding some pretty high expectations with this album.

First of all, Dragging down the Enforcer is not an Eyehategod album. Sure, the sludge, the stoned southern riffs and the Black Sabbath meets punk/ hardcore energy are all present and accounted for but that feeling of slightly unhinged aggression that made those Eyehategod albums so completely brilliant is missing. Instead, what we get is a concise, more focused approach that is pretty similar to the last Soilent Green album but not as consistently good.

The sludge is thick and threatens to overpower everything else but at the same time, it’s tightly reined in by the hardcore aggression on this record. The occasional Sabbath-y riff simply serves to break the tension and give the music some breathing space.

Stand out tracks include Safety Off which is basically the same awesome doom riff played for close to four minutes with minor variations on the theme, the superb Alcohol Tobacco Firearms which is a furious mix of southern groove and hardcore fury, Mercy Shot which has a typically mad performance from vocalist Mike Williams and the terrific title song.

I guess the downside to this album is that even with a short running time of less than 40 minutes, the songs tend to get a bit repetitive. It’s all mostly held together by Mike Williams’ consistently terrific vocal performance but at the end of the day, while the music on offer is similar to Eyehategod in a lot of ways, it’s not that brilliant. The band tends to follow the same pattern on most of the songs on the album and overall, while there are some great tracks scattered across the album, it doesn’t really make Dragging down the Enforcer essential.

Eyehategod fans and also fans of the NOLA sound will find plenty to chew on here and Dragging down the Enforcer is pretty good too. It’s just not as brilliant as I thought it would be.

Label - Season of Mist
Year of Release - 2008