This has to be one of my favourite albums of the year. If you want an album to grab you from the off and never loosen its grip then this offering from Columbus, Ohio’s Black Coffee is one that will stick with you long after track nine fades.
Opening up with the great vocal and big chunky riff of ‘I Barely Know Her’ which is preceded by the acoustic ‘Creamer’ (which is short and merely acts as a prelude to the stomp of its brother in arms) you find yourself introduced to the band with a sound that is what I’d call ‘Heavy Rock.’ It’s a sound that is more earthy and more soulful than Sabbath with a feel of early Soundgarden but it hails from the days before we became genre obsessed – and the days when Hard Rock and Heavy Metal were largely interchangeable.
‘Hurricane’ has the big in your face groove of an early rock Van Halen party rocker without the California sheen, and is built upon that wailing guitar , the relentless riff and the infectious chorus.
Rock doesn’t have to be complex, it doesn’t have to be genre defining it just needs to move you, and the deeper you get into ‘Take One’ the more you realise that Black Coffee has that understanding. ‘Monica’ has a huge chorus, a chanted refrain and enough Bluesy energy to launch a thousand leaky launches on Rock’s dark lake.
Listening to ‘Back Coffee’ I was reminded of a band that I met once in L.A. called Delta Voodoo, but these guys, formed in 2017 by drummer Tommy McCullough, singer/bassist Ehab Omran and guitarist Justin Young seem to have even more to offer and make as much noise as a three piece as you could hope for. And if they keep this up they should be relighting fires across the globe by dinner time.
If you like what you’ve heard by the midway point – marked by the rather ‘West Coast Hard Rock infused, AC/DC-like’ ‘Born To Lie’ then nothing on here will disappoint. Indeed you could even argue that the second half of the album with the likes of the haunting bluesy acoustically-paved ‘The Traveler’; the straight ahead Hard Rock of ‘Psychedelic Red’ and the gritty ‘Fade’ is even better than the first. What really tips you over the edge though is the mind-blowing closer ‘Away’ which shows just what these guys are capable of and where all of this could lead.
My only disappointment here is that we only get 8 real tracks with ‘Creamer’ really just acting as a 40 second opener to ‘I Barely Know Her’ but then you have to remember that is what music used to be all about before CD’s bumped up the amount of time available past vinyl’s standard 30-45minute playing time. Me I’d take an album with 8 or 9 great tracks over a record padded with filler any day, but on the basis of this debut I’m not entirely convinced these guys would know what filler was!
