This is the 4th CD in the “It Came From The Barn” serious from Germanys, One Million Dollar Records – the world’s only specialist Irish-Folk-Punk, Cow-Punk, Polka-Trash and Bluegrass-Punk (!!!) record label. Volume IV features five bands and 17 tracks.

First up are England’s (the North of…) The Whisky Priests, a band I’d heard ’bout but had never bothered to check out. For some reason I figured they were more on the folkie side of things but man was I wrong. They are as tough as nails and as hard as a kick in the nuts by a coal miner’s steel capped boots. Think of a North of England version of the Pogues fronted by Billy Bragg at a Coal Miners riot in the 80’s.

We’ve never tasted whisky
Just lager and red wine
But by Christ we can’t half knock ’em back
When it comes to judgement time
We’ll take you on at drinking
And if you lose we’ll skin your hide
Then you’ll say we’re the hardest gang in town
And we’ll go home drunk with pride

The Hard Men (Gary Miller)

Pronghorn (4 tracks) sound like (insert the name of your favorite band here) on major drugs. “Lady-Boy of the Night”, sounds like The Charlie Daniels Band on major drugs. “Jewish Thing”, sounds like your local Jewish folk group on major drugs. “Roobarb and Kurdish” is Suggs from Madness with the circus band on major drugs. You get my drift. Strange stuff indeed.

Greenland Whalefishers (4 tracks) should need no introduction from me and you should already own each of the four tracks here on your copies of Loboville and Main Street Sword.

The Revelling Crooks (4 tracks) play what they describe as Irish-Klezmer-Country-Balkan-Folk. Interesting, but didn’t really strike my fancy.

Finally we have Katkalta (1 track) with “Last Order”, who from their photograph look Japanese and play some manic Celtic-Punk with some extra manic Japanese (I think) vocals.

September 2003