The Devil & The Almighty Blues - The Devil & The Almighty Blues (2015)

Filled with a profound love for the old heroes of the Blues walking hand in hand with rock, metal, country and last but not least punk, The Devil and the Almighty Blues, in co-operation with the label Blues For The Red Sun from Tromso, Norway, now present their self-titled debut album. Armed with vintage Gibson guitars and tube amplifiers, they recorded the album live in studio. This was to preserve the natural and musical energy. The band took the time they needed in the studio to let the songs breathe. A new take on blues-based rock, heavy without becoming metal, slow without being doom, bluesy without being straight up and boring. The album has turned out slow, heavy, melodic and raw. The result is far from being a possible hit on the radio, but on the other hand it is one of the heaviest and coolest blues-based albums ever to be released from Norway!

When the 60’s turned into the 70’s there was a musical crossroads. The American blues had had it’s run with teens on both sides of the Atlantic long enough so that the blues-offspring named rock’n’roll had to expand or die. It did not die, it expanded in all kinds of directions! And right there in the crossroads between blues-based rock and all the world’s other sub-genres of rock, something happened to the blues. The format got experimented with, expanded and almost made unrecognizable. But at the same time the roots to the original ’real’ blues was never lost. Where Peter Green left Fleetwood Mac in 1970 with the track «Green Manalishi», where Johnny Winter stretched his musical legs, where ZZ Top bought Marshall full stacks and shot from the hip, and last but not least where the legend himself, Muddy Waters, stretched the limits of that was ’legal’ with the album «Electric Mud». And not to forget Hendrix, Free Canned Heat and the rest of the gang from the Woodstock-era. The result was a highly electric musical revolution, where e.g. the newly born genre hard rock walked hand in hand with traditional delta blues.

It is out from this musical mud The Devil and the Almighty Blues have found their inspiration. Their music is slow, heavy, melodic and raw, all without losing the almighty blues out of sight.