The Altamont Sin (Lords of Altamont, 2008)

I adopted three of the Lords' albums from a friend about a year ago. While "instant" collections are great insofar that it saves you the time of tracking down the music, sometimes it doesn't give you a chance to appreciate the distinctiveness of each album. So as a caveat to the reader, I'm still learning to appreciate the distinctiveness of each of the Lords of Altamont's first three albums. I'm not really in a position to draw distinction between this and the other albums, though I did sense this album is notably more raw-sounding than the previous two, particularly Lords Have Mercy.

In a similar way to their debut, To Hell with the Lords, The Altamont Sin takes a cinematic approach to its packaging and leadoff song, in this case warning the listener is a very stern 1950's in-class film voice of the dangers of youth culture going off the skids. Given all of this, one would expect the band to be a retro-garage group, a careful study of the lo-fi side of the 1960's. In some aspects, yes, in others, no.

The whole concept of mining the richness of the 1960's was sort of ruined by bands like Smashmouth, that somehow managed to produce stale, synthetic music in their attempts to pay homage to the golden age of garage. The Lords of Altamont wisely avoid going down that route by keeping the instrumentation (harmonica, organ, and even mellotron are in the mix, unlike modern "punk" bands), but skewing more toward the post-garage era of decade's end. So even though there are a sprinkling of covers ("Evil Hearted You" and the much later "Don't Slander Me"), the original material tends to cut closer to bands like the Stooges and the MC5, and none of the "sweeter" side of the scene. In the 1960's, most garage bands would have been completely fine to throw in a really commercial cover song to get some exposure, or add higher-quality production if they could have afforded it. Neither of these notions have or probably will ever cross the minds of the Lords of Altamont.

Incidentally, the band's mainstay, Jake Cavaliere, co-founded neo-surf band The Bomboras back in 1994. That band came to my attention as part of a Zombie-a-Go-Go Records promotional blitz back in 1998. Cavaliere and guitarist Johnny DeVilla would in turn co-found the Lords of Altamont after the Bomboras split in 2000, though DeVilla would cycle out as part of the frequent lineup changing that is inherently part of the Lords' story.