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Hank Williams III - Damn Right Rebel Proud
| Billboard |
| Hank Williams III has always respected his lineage, but he gives it even more love at the outset of his poignant and pugnacious sixth album. "The Grand Ole Opry Ain't So Grand" not only forwards a vehement argument for reinstating his grandfather, the late Hank Williams, but also shouts out some props for Bocephus—father Hank Williams Jr.—despite their admittedly difficult relationship. The rest of the aptly named "Damn Right Rebel Proud" mines a rootsy kind of country and digs even deeper into Hank III's life and psyche, mixing the darkness of the confessional "Candidate for Suicide," the weepy "Stoned and Alone" and the twangy, galloping "3 Shades of Black" with the high-speed go-for-broke of the almost bluegrassy "6 Pack of Beer." Hank III has his punk and metal sidelines, but he's country to the core and has every damn right to be rebel-proud of it here. —Gary Graff...full text |
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| Slantmagazine |
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What made Hank Williams III's Straight to Hell such a powerful statement of artistic purpose was his palpable sense of rage—against God, women, Music Row politics, his own legacy, and damn near anything else that he felt stood in his unstoppable, id-driven need to raise hell and self-destruct—and how he channeled that into an immediately distinctive sound that suggested the music his grandfather might have made had he lived to hear the Sex Pistols. Backed by his phenomenal Damn Band, Williams made existing genre tags like "cow punk" and "hellbilly" seem too polite and refined for what he set out to accomplish. His fourth country album, Damn Right Rebel Proud, continues in this same needle-punctured vein. Though it loses some of its predecessor's excitement of a self-aware, fearless artist coming into his own, it loses little of its ferocity or vision. That's clear from the opening bars of "The Grand Ole Opry (Ain't So Grand Any More)," on which Williams takes the venerable country music institution to task for its hypocritical use of his grandfather's image and music for decades after they revoked his membership. One of the things that's so compelling about Williams, as songs like "I Wish I Knew" and lead single "Long Hauls and Close Calls" make irrefutably clear, is that he doesn't claim his legacy on the basis of his name: He has a keen understanding of how his grandfather established many of the songwriting conventions and themes that have come to define modern country music, and he is able to implement those same conventions with precision and swagger. But what elevates Williams above many other retro-minded acts in the alt-country/Americana scene is that he uses these genre conventions—the economy of language, the deceptively simple melodies that often function as hooks, the use of first-person detail that brings a degree of authenticity to songs of misfortune—within the unique context of a set of metal and art-punk influences that are aesthetically opposed to the country genre's conservatism because they value the destruction, rather than the preservation, of tradition....full text |
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| Latimesblogs |
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It's a tough gig being the offspring of a musical rebel. If you try to rebel yourself, you might be accused of aping your famous forebear, and if you don't, you run the risk of being labeled a sellout. Or simply irrelevant. Hank Williams III and Shooter Jennings wrestle with the legacies of their celebrated ancestors in new albums, Williams doing it with the attitude in his music and lyrics, Jennings by completing a collaboration he started with his father a dozen years ago. Hank III has the tougher job because of the dual shadows looming over him. In 2006’s “Straight to Hell,” he loosened up the straightjacket of traditional country that had restrained him on his first few albums. Live, it was clear Williams had as much respect for Black Flag as the Man in Black, but little of the punk rocker came out on record....full text |
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