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Superchief Blow Their Stack on Corporate Dynamite

When last heard from, the riff-heavy Des Moines, Iowa, rockers Superchief made their debut with last year’s Rock Music EP. Recorded mostly live, it was a decent if familiar excursion into genre-minded heavy rock, elements of the desert showing up here and there amid straightforward drive. The subsequent self-released full-length, Corporate Dynamite, is a different game almost entirely. Still definitely in the riff rock vein, Superchief’s first album trades easygoing atmospheres for distortion-fueled burl, and sounds more professional doing it.

The five-piece keep a mind toward the old school in more than just their full jewel case presentation. A double-guitar five-piece with standalone vocals – that is, Haldor Von Hammer isn’t holding one of those two guitars or anything other than a microphone – their crunch is decidedly self-aware, and they fit easily within the heavy rock scope. In that way, tracks like “Odin be Praised” and “They Call Me Nomad” are unpretentious and, like the EP cuts before them, undemanding. Corporate Dynamite is an easy listen in the sense that you understand where it’s coming from and where it’s headed, but Superchief have refined their approach, sound heavier and more individual than they did last time around.

A lot of that is Haldor Von Hammer, who I think might actually be JT Strang, Superchief’s credited vocalist on Rock Music. If he’s assumed the identity of Von Hammer, he’s also taken on a gruffer singing style. He’s not quite at Scissorfight levels of dudeliness, but he’s not far off. Certainly in the Brand New Sin range. For him, and for guitarists Riccardo “Churchill” Terranova and Jason “The Archer” Monroe, Clutch is a decent comparison point, but Superchief have less of a funk influence. Seven-minute opener (bonus points for starting with the longest track) “Fear No Shield” shows that the band’s allegiance lies to metal as well as rock, the crashing second movement of the song – subtitled “The Stand Off” as opposed to the first, which is “The Getaway” – features china cymbal breakdown rhythms from drummer Ryan “The Orb” Marcum, and start-stop riffing from the guitars with which bassist Jason “Big Business” Boten marches in tandem.

The start-stop technique is big in Superchief’s arsenal, showing up also in “Odin be Praised” and scattered throughout Corporate Dynamite, but “Shovel in the Basement” scales back the singularly-directed pummel (at least relatively) and relies on a quieter approach. Interestingly, Superchief hone some of their most memorable material out of the middle ground on songs like “Sweat” and closer “Destiny’s Child,” which balance their heavier edge with a more complex guitar interplay – whereas, on “Shovel in the Basement,” it’s Boten in the lead during the verse – and show more focus on melody than on, say, “The Story of the King Killer” or “The Plan,” which grabs the attention if for no other reason than the similarity the opening/chorus riff bears to “Into the Void” by Black Sabbath.

“Sweat,” in particular shows a Dixie Witch-style Southern edge, to which Von Hammer’s voice is well suited, and in the song’s back half, Terrano rips through Corporate Dynamite’s best solo (rivaled by the lead work on “Saint Bukowski”). “Destiny’s Child,” by contrast, is more lighthearted, about zombies and more generally more precise in its riff, miles away from the earlier title track, which found Superchief rocking at full tilt. Since it’s earlier in the record, it works, and because there’s groove in the riffs, it works, but stepping back and looking at the biker rock spectrum, no matter which way they turn, the band isn’t really doing anything that hasn’t been done before.

To their credit, though, they’re doing it well. Some of Marcum’s drum sounds are less than ideal – thinking again of that china in “Fear No Shield” – but for a band of dudes obviously making the music because they love it and releasing it themselves without delusions of taking over the world, I’m not about to hold a compressed-feeling cymbal against them. Likewise the fact that most of the moves they make on Corporate Dynamite are telegraphed. As it was with Rock Music, Superchief want to rock, and I’m all for their doing just that. If I was rolling through Des Moines on a Friday night, I’d happily pound an inappropriate amount of beer at a gig, and I think that might be just the element the songs on Corporate Dynamite were made for.

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