Dr2 View "Divine Trash Highway" by The Howling Diablos

If we had to describe the recipe for the new Howling Diablos', 14-track collection, Divine Trash Highway, we would tell you to take a healthy dose of Delta Blues, add a good amount of MC5, and top it with a dash of Cream (the band), and you come close to the mixture that is The Howling Diablos.  Their particular brand of funky, in-your-face, jam band, blues-rock is as recognizable as it is unique.  The blues have always been about the universal themes of life's hardships, pain, adversity, and struggle.  No exceptions here, all the misery you could want is in these songs, but the HD's have a very "Detroit" way of expressing it.  This city has always been a blue-collar paradise where the workingman's, day-to-day, grind has been about the work hard, play hard, way-of-life.  This lifestyle has been widely acknowledged as the root of so much of our musical history.  Giving birth to both Motown, and inspiring/influencing many rock stars. But underneath all this there has always been a thriving blues underground. The Diablos combine all of these diverse elements in their music, creating something uniquely their own.  They mix traditional blues tracks like If You Love Someone, and Rainin' in Missippi with jazzy tunes like Check It Out and Mexican Laundromat to create a disc that is the ultimate expression of the ultra-cool, and we have to say, incredibly fun to listen to. 

Leading off the disc, the previously mentioned, If You Love Someone, puts a fresh turn on the classic blues theme with the hooky lyric "If you love someone, You got to treat them right, If you don't,... somebody else might". Featuring Calvin Cooke's smoking, sacred pedal steel guitar licks, and Johnny Evans wailing sax, it is indicative of what The Howling Diablos' bring to the blues. Cooke and Evans also combine their efforts on, A Dr2 favorite, Junkyard Jesus, weaving their way through front man, Tino gross' gritty, spoken word/rap styled lyric. Detroit references abound in Howling Diablos' music. Anyone who knows Detroit does not need an explanation for the inspiration for the Detroit anthem Dodge Main, the iconic assembly plant at the heart of our auto industry.  The songs hook says it all.  "Working at Dodge Main, trying to make a living and not go insane....workin', livin', workin, livin'". Divine Trash Highway is, simply put, Detroit Blues. In the intro to Dodge Main, a sample from the Queen of Soul herself, Aretha Franklin, lifted from The Blues Brothers movie, laments, "...All you know how to do is play the blues..."  That's all the Diablos' do and they do it well. 

Catch the Howling Diablos this weekend at the Ye Olde Saloon in Royal Oak for their Halloween Show on Saturday or catch them at the all inclusive Cherry Hill Theater in Canton on November 25^th where you'll be able to snatch your own copy of Divine Trash Highway. Of course you can download it from the internet via the Rhapsody Site or even Amazon,  or you can always order it directly from their website by clicking on the Dr2 Links or just head on over to the Dr2 MySpace page where you'll find them listed in our "Top Friends". DetroitRockReview.com - The Only Place For Local Music News & Reviews!