Koffin Kats – Our Way and the Highway

Michigan’s Koffin Kats landed on their current sound sometime around Drunk In Daylight, and most fully realized their current brand of punked up psychobilly a year later with Forever For Hire.  It’s an album that will likely serve as a springboard for the remainder of their career – and with good reason.  So it should come with little surprise that with the greased up trio’s sixth studio release, Our Way And The Highway, the boys aim to keep the train chugging without altering the landscape with the exception of a few choice landmarks.

Our Way And The Highway doesn’t offer a ton of new ideas outside of its surefire quality, but a handful of new ideas and a rock solid base make it hard to do anything but enjoy all twelve tracks.  As previously mentioned, the Kats’ core mechanics remain as strong as ever.  Vic Victor still knows how to slap a mean double bass with a true punk’s tempo (i.e. “Keep It Coming”), EX Ian’s guitar reaches new levels of rock n’ roll aggression (see “Choke”), and their raspy clean croon still towers high with pitch perfect baritone enunciation.

Forever For Hire saw the group developing a reputation for meaningful lyrics that developed damning, vivid imagery, and the same can be said here.  Many songs speak of revengeful lovers calculating revenge on a former lover, and “Severing Ties” continues with a fairly successful account of love at first sight.  While tales of life on the road (“Riding High,” “The Way Of The Road”) dominate, it’s the band’s unique take on doomsday promises that really left their mark on me.  Specifically, shady passages during “The Devil Asked” stand tall alongside the band’s impressive catalogue. To little more than a thumping bass and ominous thumping drums, a deep, demon-like voice speaks in riddles.  “An accordion plays, they’re stepping in time, pulling the wagon with bodies inside, these evil things happen sometimes, God doesn’t love you, and neither do I,” chant the opening words on a tale of hopelessness in end times.  Imagine if The Charlie Daniels Band rewrote “The Devil Went Down To Georgia” as a dark, brooding punkabilly tune and you’ll get the picture.  Others like “Locket Of Sin” offer intrigue with the essence of a western flamenco, and “The Bottle Called” ups the distortion with chilling guitar reminiscent of their American psychobilly contemporaries.

Put simply, Koffin Kats are riding high on their own successes.  The trio continues to confidently hit their groove, throwing in a host of flourishes that make Our Way And The Highway just different enough from their past output to further entice fans.  Speaking of which, Koffin Kats seem to have taken a break from their album per year formula (taking almost a two year break), but if Our Way And The Highwayrepresents a sustainable norm, then fans should welcome the extra breathing room.