Good evening, and welcome to "How to Acquaint a Young Person With the World of Rock." This week – Ten Benson. If an unsuspecting member of your entourage has yet to be acquainted with the primal rock n’ roll of London’s best back-woodsmen, lock them in a room with 48 cans of Coors (warm), the complete works of AC/DC and ZZ Top, and a copy of Tobe Hooper’s culinary classic, "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre." Marinate for a week (cf. it is important that the inhabitants do not have access to sanitary facilities).
Well, yes, great advice if you have the time. But Ten Benson are a quandary, the kind of band that you want to listen to with the commentary track on so that you can be in on the joke. What exactly are we dealing with here? In a nutshell, four guys from London who dress like they’re auditioning for "Deliverance II: This Litte Piggy" and whose music is an insane collection of hard rock clichés with sexist, monosyllabic lyrics. Post-modern? Post-post-modern? Serious and heartfelt? Who knows? Ten Benson don’t play the game quite as well as The Darkness, who pull off being a serious rock band and a big joke about being a serious rock band simultaneously. However, you’d have to be dead not to crack a smile at least once during Benson Burner.
The only problem with the disk is that a lack of variety means that the welcoming hand that you extend to ditties like "Rock Cottage" (sample lyric: "Rock Cottage….Hot Wattage…") has become a bit limp by the time penultimate track, "Black Snow," rolls around. Next time, boys, include a bit of sonic diversity. I don’t know….dueling banjoes, anyone? (6.5/10 or 98 crushed beer cans/100)
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