The Tomas Doncker Band This Is the Tomas Doncker Band’s Howlin’ Wolf EP Review by Gary Hill
What a killer set this is! It’s part blues, part R & B and part rock. It’s all entertaining. The music varies enough from piece to piece to keep it interesting. There is just some great music here. I’d recommend this to anyone who likes great blues based rock music. It’s well worth having.
This review is available in book format (hardcover and paperback) in Music Street Journal: 2013 Volume 4 at lulu.com/strangesound.
Track by Track Review
Spoonful
There’s a killer hard rocking bluesy sound that opens this. They power it out from there into something that’s got both a lot of classic rock and some progressive rock in the mix. This is a killer tune with plenty of smoking hot soul and blues built into it. It’s a real stomper that just oozes cool.
Evil This one is more pure blues in structure. The arrangement is more open than the previous tune was. There is some great harmonica playing on this and some killer retro organ textures. The guitar soloing, though, really steals most of the show. This is another killer tune on a set that’s full of them.
Blind Melon Morpheus (missed the train)
This fairly short number is a killer blues harp solo that serves as the introduction to the next tune.
Shook Down
Powered up and incredibly cool, there is a great blues groove here. There’s more of a classic rock sound to this killer tune. It’s a great retro-infused rocker that works quite well.
Smokestack Lightning
There’s a bit of a strange introduction here. Then it fires off into some more R & B infused bluesy rock. Mid-section they take it into a cool, more modern sounding groove. The vocals on this are aggressive and powerful.
Back Door Man
Although some of these other songs, “Smokestack Lightning” for instance, have been covered by many people, I think this one is probably the most widespread from that perspective. The cut is delivered here in a high octane, but rather no frills delivery. It’s a killer blues rocker that works incredibly well to cap off a great set of music in fine fashion. There is some screaming hot guitar soloing here.
