Cattle Callin

Never let it be said that Hank Williams III hasn't brought something new and different to the world of heavy metal. Danny Barnes of the Bad Livers once opined that a really fast speed metal tune was roughly the same tempo as an ordinary bluegrass breakdown, and Hank3 seems to have reached a similar corollary regarding the verbal speed of punk rock howlers like H.R. of the Bad Brains or Keith Morris of the Circle Jerks, and the syllable-crushing skills of a good auctioneer. Credited to Hank 3's 3 Bar Ranch, Cattle Callin is a 75-minute exercise in a genre Williams calls "Cattle Core," in which he marries speed metal guitar figures and high velocity double-kick drumming to recordings of livestock auctioneers as Hank cranks out neck-snapping tempos and sheets of metallic noise, while guys shout out one price after another for this steer or that heifer with a velocity that makes Hank sound like he's the one straining to keep up. If this sounds like a joke, Hank seems to be having fun with