Wrecking Ball

VINYL FORMAT. Dead Confederate mine a mix of haunting Southern rock and angst-driven grunge on Wrecking Ball, the band's debut album. At its best, Wrecking Ball mires itself in a swamp of spacey guitars and raw vocals, evoking the deep-space atmospherics of Pink Floyd while remaining rooted in the American South. Wrecking Ball is a dark, angry affair filled with minor chords and fuzzy guitar riffs; its biggest asset, then, is the band's contrasting love for vintage stoner rock. When grunge and psychedelia combine, Dead Confederate turns out the album's most effective songs, from "Flesh Colored Canvas" (at a whopping 12 minutes, the tune's hypnotic grit almost erases the sourness of its title) to "The Rat," where frontman Hardy Morris wearily begs an ex-lover to shoot him. -allmusic.com