Zeke: Death Alley | Lemmy’s Bastard Sons Riding Their Bikes

Last Updated on 01:28 AM by Giorgos Tsekas

written by Elpida Baphomet & Jurgen Kerzenaut

Genre: Speed/Hardcore Punk/Something of their own
Country: U.S.A.
Label: Aces and Eights Records
Year:2001

Back in 2001, there were a few who got their hands on this filthy masterpiece by Zeke, only because their genre was never mainstream or easily acceptable. What genre is that? A horny, high octane, sleazy mix of Motorhead and Dwarves with a spoonful of East coast punk and two glasses of Southern. Straight. All these may sound limited if you want to describe one of the best albums of that era (and not only that era).
From the beginning “Crossroads” grabs your head and bangs it against the wall until it’s smashed, ”The River” is ideal to drive your tractor in a liquor store; ”Evil Woman” this long distance cousin of “The Chase is Better Than the Catch” (you know..) is giving you the finger from across the street, the place where “Into The Night” prowls. The latter sounds like a collision of Motorhead with US Hardcore that leaves no survivors on it’s cinematic crash. The stoner-ish “Arkansas Man” could be the Saturday hymn of dark, full of piss and smoke joints of Arkansas, the likes of those where you order booze with a lift of your eyebrow and push the toilet door with your boot to avoid getting infected with diseases unknown to most men while “Live Wire”, “Evil Dead”, “Mountain Man” are the perfect soundtrack for a bloody dirt ring where the winner is the one who’s still standing.

All of the 16 songs are great and in the 27 minutes of this musical and sexual intercourse, you won’t get bored or tired, you won’t jump tracks but it is high likely that you will stop for a cigarette and then hit repeat, especially on your first times with this album.

For Zeke there’s no speed limit. They floor the pedal as hard as they can and the result is epileptic causing headaches and strokes to all the wannabes of their time. The sound is certainly tighter and not in the loose spirit of their previous recordings but this gives more groove and lets the riffage free to take heads as it passes. It’s obvious that this band would reach here, on this level with their high speed –full of energy riffs that cause nuclear chaos in your ears.

And let us not forget those little solos here and there that sound like a gang bang of Venom, Punk and Southern Comfort. Our cervello abandoned us, Ladies and Germs… The supersonic drums of Donny Paycheck sound like an elephant who’s high on a bucket of coke and hunts you down while a Blind Marky Felchtone is spitting his lyrics in your face.

In retrospect, this album is perfect for riots, extreme holliganism and meat-and-eat cannibal nights, overflowing with an energy that other bands are not even close of thinking. Too bad that “Till the Living End” (Relapse 2004) wasn’t as good as this one. Ever since they haven’t released a full album only a couple 7’’ while their live appearances are very few.