Let It Blast

Bellrays | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (May 11, 1999)
• Label: Rotz Recordings
• ASIN: B00000J743
• Also Available in: Audio CD
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,440,291 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Track Listings

1. Changing Colors

2. Cold Man Night

3. Today Was

4. Kill the Messenger

5. Blue Cirque

6. Good Behaviour

7. Testify

8. Dark Horse Pigeon

9. Hole in the World

10. Dead

11. Killer Man

12. Fuzzhead

13. King of the World

14. Black Honey

15. Blues for Godzilla

16. Get on Thru

17. Bonus Track

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Best of '99?, August 24, 1999

By 

Adam Beales (seattle, usa) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Let It Blast (Audio CD)

(This review edited to conform to content restrictions.) Godfuggindam! It's going to be awful hard to top this one in the few short months remaining before the big one drops. I dunno who these guys/gal are or where the hell they come from, but this is one of the best rack'n'roll records you're EVER gonna hear. The other fan review posted here checks Tina Turner and that's not stretching the truth even a LITTLE bit. The woman fronting this band, she just fu@#in' WAILS like you would not believe, cranking out incredible doses of grit and fire. Looking at the record a certain way, I do have to admit that both the vox and the songs/playing do derive from fairly commonplace generic forms. I mean, there's no shortage of blues/gospel divas with lungpower and certainly we got enuf snot-nosed punks huffing on those shiny chrome Dee-troit tailpipes. The genius here is in the cross-pollination and the execution. What's weird is how doggone OBVIOUS the idea is, once you grasp it. The MC5 wanted to be Black Panthers almost as much as they wanted to rock, and Detroit is ground zero for both strains of American music on display here. The whole post-Mick-Collins garage generation worships at the feet of the soul-gospel-R&B fountainhead this band channels like they were seated at the right hand of Aretha freaking Franklin. Be warned (if yer a square unused to the production aesthetic of sloppy-ass garage rock) that the "direct-to-boombox-in-our-sock-cheese-smelling-practice-space" vibe of the recording does result in some muddiness. It doesn't matter though; the vocals and the energy cut right on through the fog. There's a purity and an intensity here that (God help me) even the Motor City 5ive never quite attained. This record NEVER lets up and there isn't one throwaway song in the bunch. I can't say enough good things about this! It just kill me to know that nobody's ever really going to hear this thing. This record should be HUGE! If the right people DID hear it, Lenny Kravitz would produce (and no doubt f@#k up) the next one, and it'd be blasting outta your in-dash AM radio for months next summer. I swear, this is the record that could break balls-out, hyperdriven garage-trash mayhem into the mainstream. Whatever you do, don't miss this. If you're a label assh@le, sign them NOW! Give them all your money!!! YOU ARE NOT WORTHY!

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Ye gods, June 10, 2001

By 

Brian Moore (California) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Let It Blast (Audio CD)

"Blast" is one of those records that makes me happy merely being alive in the same world that it's in. See, the BellRays *mean* it in the best possible way. There's no artifice, there's no polish, there's nothing there but this record living and breathing. Whether you spent a lot of time hunting this set down or are maybe looking at it right now on-screen thinking it might be a nice impulse buy, actually hearing it is like discovering what brought you to this music in the first place. Really, it makes you believe that things matter again, and they do. And it's one of the best pun..., nah, one of the best records of the 90s, period.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars early Bellrays, January 26, 2005

By 

Mesnenor (New York, NY) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Let It Blast (Audio CD)

This is the first album by the current Bellrays (their earlier 90's funk rock attempt doesn't count). It was very crudely recorded, live in their rehearsal space. This band really is one of the best live bands currently working, and has been for the past several years. Their albums have been getting better and better, as they seem to be improving as songwriters. Thus all of the subsequent albums are better than this one. But this one is still a rocking testament to what they were doing in the late 90s.

Also, I don't know how the earlier reviewer got the idea that the Bellrays are from Detroit. They are from LA, CA.