Review Summary: Winnebago Deal do hot blasts of rock and roll.
There are two guys here called Ben and one day from the outskirts of Oxford decided to blow our faces away with manic grunge riffs and a strong rock and roll attitude. They have made full-time bassists redundant and armed with their guitars and small drum kits have made a wall of sound more powerful than a fifty horse powered truck. Most of Dead Gone blasts through the speakers at an alarming rate and manages to tear your face off right from the start. People have compared them to White Stripes mostly cause they’re both a duo but Winnebago Deal is very different from those they are compared to. While White Stripes have a bluesy, mostly slow sound, Winnebago Deal are fast, grungy and play until their fingers are threatening to fall off. Each song is stuffed with catchy hooks, dirty riffs and half of the Ben’s shouting until his mouth explodes.
The band fill their sound with the groove that Sabbath that perfected, the speed that Motorhead had brought to the table, and the grunge sound of the nineties while still keeping a modern sound. Dead Gone is produced by Jack Endino who made his name helping bands like Nirvana make their name. None of the songs are too clear and always have a heavy sound to go along with them. The first of the Ben’s is applied to guitar and vocals, the guitar is always fuzzily distorted and his shouts send a chill up the spine for the duration. The second Ben who does the drumming keeps everything under control. His drums sound pristine and boy, when he rocks out, he really does rock out. There is bass on the album but live, it’s probably just the two of them.
So why is this album so appeasable? It is ridiculously catchy and a lot of the songs grab you by the balls as soon as they start. It’s very addictive stuff indeed. The song “Did It, Done It, Doing It Again” contains the power the album presents. From the opening, Ben shouts out the title with such force and sings most of the song as if he’s extremely pissed off. It also holds some of the album’s best guitar riffs and neatly following onto that is the enormously hot “Afterburner”. The only problem the album holds is that the songs begin to sound the same with no sense of variety and that sadly brings the score down quite a lot. I can’t give this more than a 3.5, it’s great stuff but it’s nothing too ground-breaking or important but for what it is, it’s damn hot.
