Adelaide-based hoons Dirty Pagans purvey what they call ‘riff n’roll’, and, even after the opening minute and twenty seconds of the first track on their new album Forever High, a grubby little ripsnorter called Blood of Babylon, which contains three separate riffs that most bands would sell a kidney for, you can see that they are men of their word…

Beyond ‘riff n’roll’ the more attuned amongst you may have seen Dirty Pagans described as ‘stoner rock’; however that very limited description, conjuring up as it does images of Sabbath-obsessed lummoxes churning out Symptom of the Universe ad nauseam (not that there’s anything wrong with that), just doesn’t do justice to what’s happening on this intriguing slab o’wax.

That opening track Blood of Babylon and semi-companion pieces I Am The One and the album’s title track, for instance, carry all the ragged Southern menace of names like Crowbar and, perhaps, Exhorder. Accomplished, slightly unsettling and impossible to resist in equal measure, these two tracks show the more intrinsic ‘stoner’ essence of the band, for sure, but when contrasted with the out and out metal mayhem of You Will Know My Name (which starts off with an inspired mashup of Bark At The Moon and the Eagles‘ One of These Nights, in my mind at least) and the superb DTM (Dump Truck Mumma) – which somehow captures the piss n’vinegar lightning of Di’Anno-era Maiden in a bottle without resorting to even so much as a hint of a galloping riff – it’s almost as if two different bands are operating within the same grooves of the album.

Some may call this a lack of direction, but me? I prefer to think of it as a band that has got a lot to get off of its chest and will deploy any means necessary to get it’s message across. Even the weak point of the album – Moranna, a slightly dragging, semi balladic bruiser – carries a fair amount of firepower, and with the guitars of Matty Dee (who also puts in a very impressive shift behind the mic) and Gregory Challis meshing together throughout with formidable heft, this is an album that air guitar enthusiasts – as well as lovers of a damn good heavy metal wigout – are going to take to their hearts in short order. Great stuff.

Forever High releases on June 27th.