Hank III - Straight To Hell - 2CD (2006)

The album opens with a rendition of the Louvin Brothers’ “Satan Is Real,” sounding so spot-on that it could easily be mistaken for the original 1960 version. That is until the song stops after the first verse to segue into the Williams penned title-track, a honky-tonkin’ up-tempo number with stellar country instrumentals and of course, lyrics about hard drinking and hellraising. Most of the songs that pepper Hank III’s third studio album are about alcohol and other various vices which may account for why Straight to Hell is the first-ever country music album to get slapped with a parental advisory sticker and an edited version for Wal-Mart shoppers. “Thrown out of the Bar” brags of doing too much LSD and hanging out with David Allan Coe, while “Pills I Took” plays with a twangy front-porch shuffle and lyrics about abusing pharmaceuticals. And the fast pickin’ country-punk ditty “Smoke & Wine” waxes on weed and wine. The slow-burning and tremoloed “Country Heroes” takes a detour from the mayhem to reflect on those bygone troubadours of twang who have inspired the nouveau outlaw songs of Hank III.