Rival Sons is a band that isn’t playing around when it plays. Pressure And Time (Earache), their second studio album  is some serious 70′s-style hard rock that brings to mind Led Zeppelin, Foghat and even a bit of Ram Jam a la their “Black Betty” cover fame. They’ve opened for AC/DC, Alice Cooper, Kid Rock and other older, hard rock acts. Without question, Rival Sons is one opening band that can close the deal and become its own headliner.

There is a palpable commitment with them to pull out some rock from its proper roots – the manlier side of blues. But at the same time, their sound is 1970s long hair, beards, guitars crashing drums and sweat, a time before cell phones, mp3s, Youtube, and Twitter. They run on one of rock’s most potent natural energy supplements: testosterone.

Rival Sons’s pared-down, amped up delivery on the title cut is tantamount to a quickie aural time travel experience. ”Pressure and Time” has the day-to-day struggles of working people as its focus with a weary but pumped male perspective. The song’s outro climaxes in an impromptu orgiastic jam session.  The economy taken with the phrasing sharpens the imagery for a listener. Lead singer and primary songwriter Jay Buchanan unleashes his gritty Robert Plant-esque howl on “Get Mine,” which captures the hectic frustrating pace of work, sleep, eat, work (or just look for work) and repeat cycle. Jay Buchanan’s powerful voice is in the room with you as surely as if he were singing right in front of you.

“All Over The Road” is sexy and funny with a goofy raunchiness that offsets what could otherwise have been clichéd swagger in lines like ”You’re a tight piece of ass but you know you’re my only one” and “Pull up your dress/ I’m gonna show you how the West was won.”

Rival Sons is the throbbing rigid antithesis to coffee shop “soft rock.”

Rival Sons – Pressure And Time by marinakuchinsky