Lee Bains & The Glory Fires/ Austin Lucas @ Chelsea's TONIGHT

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This is rock ‘n’ roll from the South, dirty and distinguished, polished (but not too much) to a Motor City shine. Fresh, soulful, assured, There is a Bomb in Gilead is damn fine debut from Lee Bains III and the Glory Fires. – Steve Wilson / Reverberations
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This is a country rocking, blues wailing, soul screaming message from the depths of the dirty South. Lee Bains III (ex-Dexateens) charismatically gnashes, moans, and croons his way through a rich, earthy mix of songs. While the tracks on There’s a Bomb in Gilead shift genres, Bains’ voice and his vise-grip tight band maintain a consistent all-or-nothing attitude to drive every song. – Jester Jay
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There Is A Bomb In Gilead is deep, reflective and soulful. It’s wildly passionate music from a highly cohesive band that fuses influences like Al Green, The Rolling Stones and The Allman Brothers. – Anthony Weightman / AAA Music
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This record is a pure and unadulterated product of the south. The influence of soul like Pickett and southern rock like the Allman Brothers is extremely self-evident but one can also hear hints of R.E.M. in these songs and even some twinges of garage rock (ala Primal Scream). – Oklahoma Lefty
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So many times, I get caught up on the first couple of songs on a new album, mostly because I am feeble-brained with a moderate case of ADD, but on There Is A Bomb In Gilead, it’s the last three songs that sealed the deal. “Roebuck Parkway” is a great acoustic number that would fit in nicely on Jason Isbell’s Here We Rest. "Robeuck Parkway" is the main thoroughfare through Birmingham and the tune reminicses on his youth in Alabama. – HearYa
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You can sit around wishing a band would emerge sounding like a fusion of the Stones circa Exile on Main Street and the Band at its down ‘n’ dirtiest – with a touch of the Allman Brothers, and a few shakes of CCR’s “anything could happen tonight” wildness. And nothing happens. But, within the last few years, something’s wafted up from Birmingham, Alabama. It’s shot through with juicy, smoky, backyard barbecue rock/blues/swamp punch. – Mary Leary / San Diego Entertainer
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Interview: Lee Bains III & The Glory Fires. – You Hear This?
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Recorded in the heart of Dixie and mixed in the Motor City, the debut release from Lee Bains III & The Glory Fires burns a path through the American musical landscape on which lesser bands have become hopelessly lost. These boys are forging a sound based on garage rock guts, southern riffs and gospel flavors that was first explored by the Rolling Stones 40 years ago on Exile on Main St. The difference here is the Stones were doing an homage to the sounds they learned to love. On There is a Bomb in Gilead, with Bains on vocals, drummer Blake Williamson, bass player Justin Colburn, and guitar player Matt Wurtele…the band plays like the stuff Gram Parsons called ‘Cosmic American Music’ is in their DNA. – Auditory Arson
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A one time member of the now-defunct Dexateens, Lee Bains III continues where his former band left us, delivering a set of raw, punky, southern fried blues-rock that pulls inspirations as far and wide as Al Green and Lynyrd Skynyrd, to late-’60s Stones, Allman Brothers, Stooges and MC5. Of course, this will go great with Alabama Shakes’ recent album, only Bains and Co are that much more world weary, road-tested and real-deal. – Other Music
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The upbeat tunes suggest a mix between Mitch Ryder, Iggy Pop and pre-punk garage rock. Bains’ church roots surface in spiritual vocabulary, a few testimonial vocals and the mondegreenian album title (drawn from the traditional “There is a Balm in Gilead”). Even the band’s name is homophonic, drawn from a mishearing of “glorifiers.” Bains wears his Southern roots proudly, singing of the summers and cities that made up his childhood, and reveling in the land and literature. The Glory Fires play with the confidence, tight grooves and practiced looseness of a band that’s piled up more miles than they’ve yet to roll onto an odometer. – Hyperbolium
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Bains sounds as born to write rock & roll in this vein as peers like Ted Russell Kamp and the Pawnshop Roses. For the Glory Fires, it’s all about "Righteous, Ragged Songs," and Bains and the band deliver that in spades on There is a Bomb in Gilead. – Michael Toland / Blurt
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Lee Bains III calls it “dirty Alabama rock ‘n’ roll.” It’s Southern rock — being from the Deep South and being rock — but there’s something awfully raw about it. A little brawny Muscle Shoals R&B and gritty Memphis soul with a sweaty dose of ’70s Detroit punk. – Shea Stewart / Sync
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There Is A Bomb In Gilead is sexy. The result is everything The Drive-By Truckers have been trying to become since Jason left/was kicked out of the band. The result is pure rock and roll. Pure Muscle Shoals. Pure Essential Listening. Pure American music. – Ninebullets
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Guitarist/singer/songwriter Lee Bains III leads his Birmingham, Alabama–based band in a raucous exploration of the intersection between garage rock, soul, country and punk on this full-length debut. Not unlike acts like the Black Keys, Bains manages to merge these styles into a rollicking, timeless sound with plenty of six-string swagger. – Guitar World
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There is a Bomb in Gilead – which is a lyric of a traditional spiritual about the salvation of the soul through Christ (the “balm”, not “bomb”) that Bains misheard as a child – incorporates some of the most iconic regional styles of American music, from Muscle Shoals to Detroit garage rock to delta blues of Mississippi. – JFelton / Record Dpt.
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Everything You Took : she took his Ramones T-shirt, and she took his Walker Percy book. On a grooving slice of southern rock with a tasty Muscle Shoals-soaked guitar solo, all a broken-hearted dude asks for in return is small hope and a touch of sweet mercy. – Brad Wheeler / Five new songs you need to hear – The Globe & Mail
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Austin Lucas
STAY RECKLESS

Austin Lucas has a slippery voice and a cracked heart. “Stay Reckless” (New West), his new album, is teeming with palpable anger and sadness, and sometimes he doesn’t sound as if he can bear it. But this isn’t a reluctant album; it’s made of muscular and well-toned roots-country, the thickness of which is where Mr. Lucas’s background in punk and hardcore bands peek through. Emotionally, though, he’s shaky. “It was the spring and my life was a patchwork of pieces,” he sings on “Let Me In.” On the beautiful “Alone in Memphis,” he’s on the verge of collapse. And “Rings,” about broken covenants, is pure heartbreak. “That ring was slipping off your finger, just like it was raining wedding bands,” he sings. “Just a piece of gold/ That never fit your hand.”

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