3 Bar Ranch Cattle Callin

Let's not mince words here; anyone who has actually heard of this album pretty much knows it's absolutely terrible and also probably knows not to take it too seriously - I doubt Hank himself took it all that seriously as he was making it. (I think it's meant to be a joke; I suppose it's funny for about 5 seconds.) Still though, I stumbled on this randomly one day having reminded myself of the fact Hank III has a page on Metal Archives, and was absolutely floored not just by how shit it is, but also the fact it came from a musician of some repute and fame. This sounds like a bargain bin demo that never made its way out of the dregs of Bandcamp, from that one local opener that gets inexplicably booked at every show.

In spite of this album's 76 minute run time it's actually pretty easy to describe the vast majority of it. The backbone of basically all of these tracks is a series of generic fast grindcore/speed/thrash metal riffs with some chugging thrown in at times, played with a very cheap-sounding and sloppy guitar tone. There is no melody to them to speak of, the sound means they aren't heavy or aggressive sounding at all, they almost never form a coherent rhythm you can latch onto, and they're played so flatly and mechanically they're essentially just extreme metal's answer to background noise - it doesn't help that they basically all sound exactly the same. Backing up these riffs is a series of obviously programmed drum beats that follow the grooves of the guitars - and given how messy the riffs are, the drums are similarly messy and all over the place, though unlike the guitars they have some semblance of weight at least.

These ramshackle instrumental beds then have thrown on top of them a lot of audio of cattle auctioneers doing their thing at auctions - talking very quickly, pretty much. You can barely understand what they're saying, partly because they're going so fast, partly because often the recordings are layered such that they overlap, and mostly because the guitars are mixed poorly enough that they fight for space with the vocals, rendering it total gibberish, in effect. Thrown on top of these at many points are the tuneless wailing vocals of presumably Hank, distorted with effects to the point of instant irritation, also mixed horribly and only serving to make this album sound more godawful. There is no songwriting to speak of, the album just continually trots out crappy riff after crappy riff with a near-endless stream of unintelligible vocals thrown on top. The music is so structurally deficient that it sounds like the drum parts were made after the riffs were made, with the guitars being the element that drives the song forward and the drums following - the exact opposite of how it should be.

Given the processed, cheap sound of this whole thing it almost listens like a bad cybergrind record; like Agoraphobic Nosebleed decided to make this extended 76 minute piss-take with bad riffs, bad drumming and bad vocals as a parody of some kind. It also sounds like 76 minutes of brain dead, bizarro 'Jesus Built My Hotrod', with its employing of processed speed metal-style riffs, drum machines and unintelligible effects-laden vocals all done horribly instead of amazingly. Famed internet music critic Anthony Fantano uses the classification of 'Not Good' for some reviews; reserved for albums that are so thin on worthwhile musical ideas and content that they are pretty much awful by default, at their core. I think 76 minutes of bad riffs and bad drumming aimlessly strung together to form musical beds for cattle auction recordings and shit vocals would be a great fit for that category.

Did I mention this is 76 minutes long?

Since becoming aware of him recently I'd consider myself a pretty big fan of Hank 3s country stuff, and of course a life-long metalhead, so his work in the metal arena interested me quite a bit. Unfortunately, the title of this review could also serve as the entire review.

There's not a whole lot to say about this album. Every track features audio of a cattle auctioneer conducting an auction, which sounds a lot like "doIseefiveIseefivedoIseefiveandaquarterfiveandaquarterdoIseesix." Under that you've got a guitar pounding out some pretty low-effort riffs - very basic palm-muting patterns, mostly, with some extremely simple tremolo lines at times. I know the word is over-used, but these riffs are generic in the sense that they use some of the simplest, most archetypal metal rhythms, while generally sticking to the open sixth string. There's only one or two riffs per track, as well, so you're sitting with them for a while. The guitar tone is muddy and oversaturated in the style typical of low-effort home recordings, which is exactly what this appears to be.

If there's bass it follows the guitars and is buried in the mix to the extent that I didn't notice it.

There are drums, which support the guitar riffs by playing simple stock metal beats that don't change much. I'd say they're a lot better than the guitar work simply because the drum performance here is much closer to what you might find on a good record than the guitar work, but there's nothing interesting happening either. I'm fairly confident they're programmed, but if so the programming is well done.

About 20 minutes into the album Hank's vocals enter. The auctions don't stop, he just starts singing over them. He's applied a bunch of filters to his vocals, and they're heavily distorted, so you can't really tell what he's saying. The vocals don't seem to have any structure, either. There are no clear verses or choruses, or any real rhythm to it. Sometimes he's singing, sometimes he's screaming or growling, but there's so much distortion that there's not much difference.

Later on some keyboards enter. Again, they just kinda plop in on top of the auction, drums, guitar, and Hank's warbling, and they don't make any effort to fit in either.

I know a 0 is an extremely harsh rating, saying that there is nothing of value here for anyone, which is why I gave it a 1. There is the slight amusement of hearing cattle auctions over metal riffs, which lasts all of 30 seconds, but I guess it's something. Other than that, though, there truly is nothing to listen to here. The cattle auctions aren't interesting or funny even if you could really hear them, the riffs are simply not interesting in anyways, and once the vocals and keyboards enter the sound becomes extremely messy and unpleasant to listen to. There are no real songs here, nothing memorable, even the cover art is half-assed.

If you want Hank III, I recommend Straight to Hell or Damn Right Rebel Proud. If you want to hear him play metal, check out his band Assjack or the supergroup Superjoint Ritual, or even his recent album Attention Deficit Domination. There's really no reason to listen to this.