Review of Duty To Warn by Dirty Rock Magazine (Spain), writer Carlos Pérez Báez
“GravelRoad released their ninth album this past June, titled “Duty to Warn ,” produced by Jack Endino , where the 10 new tracks explore the well-earned guitar interplay gained from tens of thousands of miles of touring across the United States and Europe over the course of their last eight albums and 20 years on the road.
This is the band’s fourth release with Jack Endino, after working on their previous album Crooked Nation (2020), Capitol Hill country blues (2016) and El Scuerpo (2014). The Seattle quartet is capable of getting you on your feet with a bang of the best North Mississippi Blues, Psychedelia, Heavy Rock and Punk from the band that was the backing band of the great T-Model Ford for five years (2008-2013).
GravelRoad is made up of Stefan Zillioux, Martin Reinsel, Jon Kirby Newman, and Joe Johnson. GravelRoad revisits that nostalgia with Black Sabbath-esque beats, a crossroads between John Lee Hooker and the most cannibalistic boogie-woogie of the Mississippi Delta. Muddy landscapes of reverb-soaked guitars and hypnotic rhythms that challenge your senses, prepare to be sated by this new studio album from the Seattle-based heavy blues rockers.”
Review of Duty To Warn by Back In Rock Magazine (Italy), writer da Alberto Centenari
Seattle year of grace 2023; the blues in the famous (at least for those who live on Rock) city in the state of Washington is played as Gravelroad plays it.
For those who don’t know the Seattle band, I remind you that we are certainly not talking about newbies, but a quartet of rockers who have been active for twenty years now and have nine albums under their belt.
“Duty To Warn” is the title of the new album, four years after the previous “Crooked Nation” (a lifetime by their standards), which sees the quartet once again protagonists of a good work, bloody, dirty, alternative.
Alternative is, in my opinion, the key word to read the sound of Gravelroad , a blues that, while bringing lovers of classic sounds closer, flatters listeners accustomed to modern and, indeed, alternative sounds.
Garage, Metal, Rock’n’roll and Alternative make up the high-proof Blues cocktail that Gravelroad , now almost in double figures in full-length releases, have been concocting for years and which they confirm in this new album, produced by guru Jack Endino in Seattle.
Gravelroad are bluesmen through and through, having collaborated for a long time with one of the most talked about legends of the genre, James Lewis Carter Ford, alias T-Model Ford until his death in Mississippi in 2013, at the uncertain age of ninety and a life spent between prison, trouble and the devil’s music, and with whom they recorded two albums, “Ladies Man” in 2009 and “Taledragger” in 2011 .
“Duty To Warn” shifts the band’s sound slightly towards a less classic proposal, more accessible even for those who are not very familiar with the genre.
Joe Johnson (Bass), John Kirby Newman (Guitar, Vocals), Martin Reinsel (Drums) and Stefan Zillioux (Guitar, Vocals) have given voice to their concept of Blues Rock with an excellent album, confirming themselves on the scene as a proposal of quality and remarkable originality.
Review of Duty to Warn by Peter Marinus at Bluestown Music (Netherlands)
For a bit of abrasive, unpolished rock, you can go to Seattle band GravelRoad . Their previous eight albums have proven that.
Joe Johnson (bass), Jon Kirby Newman (guitar, vocals), Martin Reinsel (drums) and Stefan Zillioux (guitar, vocals) once again opt for an unpolished mix of influences such as the Velvet Underground, Canned Heat, The Jesus & Mary Chain, Neil Young and the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion on their latest album.Raw and sometimes very oppressive.
It opens with the gritty, venomous rocker Get It Together . A garage blues number with unpolished riffs and languid vocals. Then follow the filthy, abrasive riffs of Jailhouse Limp . In the sultry Traveler you come across psychedelic blues influences a la Canned Heat. Lazily swaying with an unpolished edge.
Storm’s Coming takes you in an intoxicating way in a Jesus & Mary Chain like way. World On Fire is a burning fuzz rocker in which you encounter the sound of Neil Young & Crazy Horse.
After the scrapingly swaying My Love , Oceans sounds intoxicating and sultry again with the message “come on fuckers, show me the way, come on you devils kneel down and pray to the oceans of rain”. You Ain’t Shit is a gritty variation on the Bo Diddley beat. Dirty and angular at Jon Spencer’s best. Wired To Rust has a high Blue Cheer-like fuzz content, which is mixed with a Sonic Youth-like impetuosity.
Manimal Farm is the acoustic closer of the album. An instrumental with a cozy fireplace and bizarre animal sounds.
It is my Duty To Warn you that with this album you are bringing an intense and gritty album into your home!
Review of Duty To Warn, by Jiří Vladimír Matýsek in Full Moon Magazine (Czech Republic)
“Year after year, Seattle’s Gravelroad continue to craft their unique blues, which is cut with grunge and psychedelia. Their concert activities – that is, those on the old continent – have been slowed down by the covid pandemic, but albums are released with an iron regularity of two to three years. This year’s Duty to Warn is already the ninth item in the discography. A decent performance for two decades.
The music is based on the principles of North Mississippi Hill Country Blues, i.e. a lot of work is done here with hypnotic repetitiveness and urgent rolling. The sound is out of focus, the vocals seem to float in a mist over the intertwining fuzzed guitars. And whether Gravelroad are rockier, like in Jailhouse Limp, or, on the contrary, “introspective” like in Oceans, it’s intoxicating and captivating every time. Even in the case of the somewhat unexpectedly relaxed Traveler, which takes the American quartet almost into the realm of country music.
The sound is traditionally signed by Jack Endino, the man who gave the same care to the records of Nirvana, Soundgarden, Screaming Trees and the entire Seattle musical cream. Duty to Warn sounds both massive and acceptably obscured. Compared to the oppressive Crooked Nation Blues (2020), which hit Trumpian America with gusto, Duty to Warn is a bit lighter. But the truth – only slightly. The bony drive serving an hourglass with red sand, which decorates the cover record this time, together with songs like World on Fire or Stormʹs Coming, suggests that it is just a break and there is not much space left for space trips from older records.
Over time, Gravelroad managed to create a unique concept of heavy-duty blues. On Duty to Warn, they deepen and add new elements to what has already been established, be it the aforementioned country music or Taryn Dorsey’s vocals on all four tracks. The essential, the captivating groove, the bluesy feeling and the imaginary weight of the entire material, remains.”
Interview with GravelRoad guitar player Stefan Zillioux and drummer Martin Reinsel by Michael Limnios from Blues.gr (Greece)
A deep dive discussion with Stefan and Martin regarding the new album “Crooked Nation”, touring, the creative process, T-Model Ford and much more. Click here for the full interview
Full Moon Magazine (Czech Republic) Review of Crooked Nation – September, 2019
“Crooked Nation is so far the darkest record of the Seattle band, this time the dust from the road damn his teeth. But Gravelroad is not fading, and they are still moving forward along their own line.”
Click here for link to full article
Concert Review – September 13, 2019 GravelRoad at Kulturrampe, Krefeld Germany
Sounds of the South Music Blog, Germany
Nothwest Music Scene review of Mississippi Time
“this is not a delta blues album in the traditional sense, but rather a reflection of the new Memphis underground and the very far left of center world of the movement deemed “Deep Blues.” The quartet delivers a full on symphonic garage rock sonic that explores all the sounds possible with two guitars, bass and drums.”
http://www.northwestmusicscene.net/review-gravel-road-mississippi-time/
American Standard Time review of Capitol Hill Country Blues
“GravelRoad blues is big beat music, a deceptively Southwestern sound made right here in the Northwest, a fiercely pioneering outpost where we quarrel with money like some crazy lover, and make our last civilized goodbyes before heading into isolated Northern frontiers. “Backyard” and “Rather Be Lonesome” are roadhouse ready boogie down jams that put a dip in the hip and a shimmy in the shoulder. CHCB simmers on the drone of the rhthym section until the album reaches a boiling point. By the time you get to “One More Dollar” the lid’s done blown off the damn pressure cooker, the ceiling splattered in hot shit, but you could give a damn because you’re struttin your ass off in the living room high on the heat of cracklin electric riffs. “Rabbit Run” might be the finest blues Gravel Road ever done played. The nearly six minute long epic turns a simple phrase into a psychedelic blues journey with methodical electric guitar riffs, solos, and foot stomping drums.
As they’re wont to, Gravel Road puts blues riffs on the elastic of time and not only stretches backwards, but forward into new ground, like on the intensely weird “Song The Darkness”. A futuristic blues muffled in fuzzy ribbon mic vocals, wandering, dreamy guitars, and that thudding, droning, back line. This is northwestern music: comfort sounds that you can wrap yourself in like the familiar grey skies; made by folks who huddle into studios slightly bigger than hallways outside the rain and grind out filthy albums to scare away the gloom. “Green Lungs” is completely weeded out with a krautrock inspired trip that speeds up and agitates the blues. The album comes to rest on slide guitar and finger-picked “I Feel High”. As you should. Gravel Road hits the road this fall playing a bevy of dates and they’re in rare form, rugged, gristly, and bluesy as hell.”
~Sean Jewell, American Standard Time
http://www.americanstandardtime.com/music/gravel-road-capitol-hill-country-blues/
Full Moon Magazine (Czech Republic) Review of Capitol Hill Country Blues
“Reviewer Patrick Wells once said, that Gravelroad sounds like John Lee Hooker if he was a member of Black Sabbath. At that time, he didn’t know that the record which fits this statement that is yet to come. The album is entitled Capitol Hill Country Blues and Gravelroad continues to sharpen their specific psychedelic-hard-blues music with both main genres melting in a very organic way. The four-piece band harvests the products of their previous records, sharpens and deepens the concepts they started earlier and brings with it the sound of high originality.
The sound is dark, hypnotic in its repetitiveness (in doom-blues piece Song To Darkness gets well known Mississippi mud an adequate musical form). In equal shares they take from both musicians mentioned before, which are easily connected in one single expression. This expression is – sometimes less, sometimes more – spiced with slight psychedelic odor, which takes listener to the long trips through space and time.
The key elements are two guitars, sometimes interweaving, sometimes fighting. More, the guitar figures are quite simple, based on the traditional blues, even that there is no classical 12-bar on the record. Gravelroad doesn’t need that. The apex stone is the rhythm section, bass and hard-hitting drums.
You can feel quite a lot of devotion to the blues from the record. It is not taken in the narrow-minded way, it is taken as a base, as river, which flows under the surface and only sometimes it bursts over the surface. Capitol Hill Country Blues is a record for the new millennium. It is modern, with interesting sound, amusing. The Record of the year? Unlikely, this title will go to some well known name. But for me, it is.”
Writer Rick Bowen from No Depression reviewed the new album from GravelRoad and describes it as “a new blend of Northwest rock with trance blues and deep soul grooves“
For the complete album review click here:
http://nodepression.com/album-review/digging-deeper-hill-country-blues
Black Bull Blues Blog review Capitol Hill Country Blues
““Come and Gone” is also a favorite and brings the GravelRoad liquor mix of Blues and Grunge more in place. GravelRoad always brings their blues with a garage-edged angle.”
For the full review click here:
GravelRoad’s 2014 album El Scuerpo received 8 out of 10 stars from Classic Rock Magazine
“It’s a little like what John Lee Hooker may have sounded like in Black Sabbath. And who wouldn’t want to hear that?”
Patrick Wells, Classic Rock Magazine
Press received for GravelRoad’s July 2013 release ‘The Bloody Scalp of Burt Merlin’
…”torn-and-frayed moments like Cocaine Baby are winningly chaotic, evoking sunburnt arms, clutching joints, hanging out of pickups, pointed south.”
Classic Rock Magazine – July 2013
“They are fearless. They are one of the few bands with the intelligence to touch the third rail of classic rock without turning into cliché.”
Reykjavik Grapevine, October 2015
“Nothing is easy on this album. Nothing is safe. It’s a full bore explosion of a statement. The band even departs from the hip-shake beat that, I feel, locked them into the Mississippi form. I’ve always been impressed with how drummer Martin Reinsel locks down the groove of their sets live. Here, he takes the role of a hard driving trucker, moving beyond that hip shake kick… slamming the band into heavy rock territory with the RPMS climbing on ‘Med Pass,’ then slipping it back down with ‘Bottom of the World’.”
Bart Cameron, American Standard Time – July 2013
GravelRoad appears on the soundtrack for the January, 2013 movie Baytown Outlaws, starring Billy Bob Thornton and Eva Longoria The film follows the Oodie brothers-Brick, Lincoln and McQueen-who act as vigilante killers for the local sheriff. When the trio accept a job to rescue a young boy from his godfather, plans quickly fall apart as the brothers aim to deliver the boy to safety while pursued by groups of assassins.
http://www.soundtrack.net/movie/the-baytown-outlaws/
Press for GravelRoad’s 2012 7 inch vinyl release ‘Pedernales’
GravelRoad, Pedernales (out now, Knick Knack Records, gravelroadblues.com): “See That My Grave Is Kept Clean” is the season’s first solid drinking song (you’ll need a whole pitcher). “Monkey With a Wig,” the front side of this single, is sophisticated bar-band blues at its most riffalicious.
Chris Kornelis, Seattle Weekly
Press received for GravelRoad’s 2012 release ‘Psychedelta’
“Since the release of their last album (2008’s Shot The Devil), this Seattle band has toured and recorded two albums with primal Mississippi blues artist T-Model Ford. Some of his raw energy might’ve rubbed off on them because they’re now back with their third and strongest album to date, a hard-driving set of raw, gritty blues-rock steeped in Mississippi hill country blues, featuring a variety of rocked-up deep, primal blues songs combining rumbling electric guitar riffs and some sweet slide along with hypnotic rhythms and husky vocals.”
“imagine a sound that combines the Texas grease and grit of Fandango! -era ZZ Top; the swamp hoodoo of Creedence at their trippiest; the ass-pocketful-of-whiskey-and-headful-of-something-else sway of Jon Spencer; and the wump of John Lee Hooker’s stomping left foot.”
Brian Robbins – jambands.com – February 2012
“Psychedelta is a proper album. Consistent, addictive, hypnotic.”
Classic Rock Magazine, Albums of The Year So Far – August 2012
Featured in Classic Rock Magazine – Free download and exclusive album stream
“If The Black Keys are the acceptable, mainstream face of blues, these guys deserve their time in the sun…Delta blues influences to one side, “Caves” is the most overtly trippy song, a meandering and searing gaze into Owsley’s laboratory that floats along. “Leave Her Alone” locks into a groove and cuts out just as it threatens to go other places. “Let Me Hold You” is a restrained closer, its vocal way in the background…There’s a certain audience “Psychedelta” will appeal to. It’s probably not the Black Keys listeners who think they started last week. Gravelroad eschews the melodic trimmings. This is music to be absorbed late at night, not passed off with a cursory listen.”
“Say what you will about whiteboys and the blues, the bass tone that starts “Nobody Get Me Down” is unfuckwithable. And Seattle trio GravelRoad come by it pretty honestly, having served for years as the backing back for bluesman T-Model Ford.”