Colonel Knowledge/30 Tigers

Frontman J.D. Wilkes is one of the smartest and wildest musical mythologizers of the American South at work today, and The Legendary Shack Shakers are adept at fusing sonic sinew to the bones of his ideas. The band has gotten into the habit of recording albums focused on themes, and Agridustrial is one of those. Wilkes delivers whiplash wordplay in crazed carnival barker fashion, cursing the marks of suburban sprawl and eulogizing a more violent, less commercialized era. The Shack Shakers play their most punishing and, yes, industrial-sounding hillbilly punk-blues ever, thanks to the addition of the Jesus Lizard’s Duane Denison on guitar and jarring, metal-on-metal blacksmith percussion. They band harnesses all of that force to a blues hook – as during “God Fearing People” and “Everything I Ever Wanted To Do” – it’s really something.