When Moonshine and Dynamite Collide

Album Review

Veteran Southern rockers Jackyl may have arrived just in time for the death knell of hair metal with their 1992 debut, but lead singer Jesse James Dupree solidified the band’s patch in the pop culture pasture when he introduced the chain saw to hard rock on the their signature hit, “Lumberjack.” On the Georgia-based outfit’s sixth full-length record (and first since 2002’s Relentless), straight-up, blue-collar, hard-drinking, tail-chasing guitar jams abound, resulting in the best AC/DC album since 2008’s Black Ice — Dupree is a better, vintage Brian Johnson than Johnson himself was. The appropriately titled When Moonshine and Dynamite Collide’s 12 tracks range from boozy hillbilly rock (“My Moonshine Kick’s Your Cocaine’s Ass"; not a Wesley Willis cover) to Buckcherry/Smell the Glove-era Spinal Tap-esque sex romps (“Get Mad at It,” “Overflow of Love”), all the while employing an oddball confederate charm that makes a media-baiting title such as “Just Like a Negro” (“United we are funky, and it’s a funky nasty scene, all colors run together, washed here in this machine”) feel almost quaint in its King of the Hill-inspired political incorrectness. This is State Fair metal at its purest.