Lee Bains III & the Glory Fires rip it up with There Is A Bomb In Gilead
BY Chris Martin

Equal parts southern swagger and punk rock Lee Bains III & the Glory Fires have arrived on the scene with their debut album There Is A Bomb In Gilead. The first record from the southern quartet is loud, rowdy and full of kick-ass rock tunes. They have been able to harness the power of a live show taking place in a dark dirty hole in the wall and implant it onto a record.

The album goes from 0-60 at the start as Bains and crew offer up the blistering guitar heavy “Ain’t No Stranger” to kick off the album, and things just get better from there. “Red Red Dirt Of Home” delivers more of the killer guitars and the tune “Centreville” sounds like the bastard love child of Lynyrd Skynyrd and the MC5. They are not a one trick pony and are able to infuse blues (“Choctaw Summer”), a little soul (“Everything You Took”) and slow things down (“Righteous, Ragged Songs”). One tune that stands out is “Roebuck Parkway”, an acoustic number driven by sharp lyrics and Bains’ vocals it reminds me a lot of Jason Isbell, and that is a good thing.

There are few artists who nail their debut albums. Lee Bains & the Glory Fires happen to be one of the few. The album is a collection of strong tunes that can each stand alone but when listened to as a whole are really powerful. The more I listen to it the better it sounds as I discover something different with each spin. For those of you out there who say there is no good new music need to give There Is A Bomb in Gilead a listen it will have you reconsidering your thinking.

READ THE WHOLE REVIEW ON THE EXAMINER SITE

Interview: Lee Bains III & The Glory Fires
by KA Webb

Birmingham-based band Lee Bains III and the Glory Fires are on the road with their first record, There is a Bomb in Gilead. They play loud and fast, and they do it well. Listen to the record, and you’ll get the sense that these are the guys who, if mocked in a movie, would be the band playing behind a chain-link fence, shattered beer bottles beneath their boots.

Here’s what Guitar World has to say about the release: “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.”

What interests me most about the record is its honesty. Bains is earnest, and it’s easy to believe that the man who whisper talks lyrics on moodier tracks is the same guy wailing in his Southern lilt two tracks later. Bains is a writer. And here’s what he has to say about it all — the music, the South, and the writing.

READ THE ENTIRE INTERVIEW WITH LEE BAINS ON THE YOU HEAR THIS SITE

DUSTED MAGAZINE REVIEW HERE

Lee Bains III was a late addition to The Dexateens, joining the punk-spliced-to-Muscle Shoals outfit’s three-guitar attack in 2008, in time for the band’s final album Singlewide. The Dexateens, along with The Quadrajets (and later, The Immortal Lee County Killers), defined a certain kind of southern garage punk in the early ’00s, incorporating not just blues, but gospel, redneck rock (Skynyrd, Molly Hatchet, Allmans) and soul into an incendiary onslaught. Lee Bains III and The Glory Fires picks up where the Dexateens left off, with ragged blues, rampant stomps and barroom guitar brawls. There is a Bomb in Gilead is as deeply felt as it is deeply fried, as indebted to Al Green as to Iggy and the Stooges.

Bains’s band is young-ish, raw and full of energy. His guitar player, Matt Wuertele, grew up under the influence of The Dexateens and The Quadrajets, bassist Justin Colburn played with Bains in Arkadelphia, and manic, sunglasses-at-night, singing drummer Blake Williamson has played with Dan Sartain and Taylor Hollingsworth. A few weeks ago, I saw Bains and his band play like they were on fire to a crowd of three other bands and maybe seven paying customers. They conceded exactly nothing to the fact that no one was there and played the best set of garage punk I’ve seen all year. A Bomb in Gilead, assisted by several garage vets (Tim Kerr, Lynn Bridges, Jim Diamond), captures that live sound and goes it one better, uncovering unexpected depth, soul and intelligence in a set of boot-stomping songs.

Live, their best songs are the rocking ones. Guitar-squalling, eerily harmonized “Centreville” and unstoppable “Magic City Stomp” are both tight, aggressive bursts of punk attitude, though the more complicated “Centreville” sounds better on the record, and harder-running “Magic City” comes across best in the club. The slower songs open up on Gilead, revealing strong, sure country blues chops and surprisingly sensitive lyrics. “Everything You Took” stings with Let It Bleed-style guitar twang and slouching, bruised and blown-out vocals, but it really makes its mark with the words. Bains sounds spent, exhausted, beaten as he makes one last ditch effort to hold onto the girl, offering “You can keep my Walker Percy…You can keep that tee-shirt my brother got the time he saw the Ramones,” and, I think, probably watching her walk away anyway. In “Centreville,” Bains slips in a line about being “overeducated and underemployed” into its ferocious attack, and judging by the words, he’s not kidding.

The other thing that emerges on CD is how naturally Bains and his crew mine Southern soul. The title song, which closes out the album, is the real sleeper, its gospel melody worn threadbare, its arrangements cut back to piano, drums, a little bass, and rough and righteous call and response. It’s a slow song, but backed with drama, as Bains squeals like James Brown, rasps like O.V. Wright and stretches out the climaxes like the Reverend Al Green. Not many punk bands could bear the scrutiny of such a long, tight close-up, but Lee Bains and his guys get better the more you look at them.

By Jennifer Kelly

JAMBANDS REVIEW HERE

Published: 2012/05/15
by Brian Robbins

The last time I wrote about Lee Bains III was almost three years ago to the day. The occasion was a review of Singlewide by the Dexateens, a great-but-gone band that Bains played guitar in. I concluded that review with the following: “The Dexateens have made the album of their career. If you missed buying Wilco’s AM when it first came out – or better yet, the Replacements’ Let It Be – you have found redemption in Singlewide.”

Well, I still think Singlewide is a great album, even though the Dexateens are no more. Here’s the deal, however: take that raggedy-assed blue jean grit of AM and stir it into a bucket of the punk-but-smart vibe of the ‘Mats’ Let It Be, slather on some southern soul, and hit it with a few dashes of just plain damn cool – that’ll put you on the road to understanding what Lee Bains III & The Glory Fires’ There Is A Bomb In Gilead sounds like.

The tunes are penned by Bains and The Glory Fires play them like this might just be the last record on Earth. Not in terms of franticness, thrash, or desperation – rather, they just plain make ‘em count. There are no wasted moves here. Drummer Blake Williamson and bassist Justin Colburn know when to let the groove burble along like a pair of idling glasspacks (it gets no cooler than Colburn’s bassline on “Righteous, Ragged Songs” – unless it’s Williamson’s thumb-in-the-beltloops beat on “Choctaw Summer”). And they know just exactly when to slam the pedal to the floormat: Colburn drives “Centreville” hard and deep into the corners, culminating in a fierce, thrashing/smashing “Train Kept A’Rollin’”-style drum explosion by Williamson.

While Bains plays some keys on There Is A Bomb In Gilead, his main instrument is guitar. He and lead picker Matt Wurtele make a great team; their dry-toned work on “The Red, Red Dirt Of Home” sounds like the Ron Wood/Keith Richards weaves on Wood’s I’ve Got My Own Album To Do, while the twang of “Reba” recalls the Stones’ “Dead Flowers”. Listen to “Opelika”: Wurtele’s shimmering leads flash and sparkle all around Bains’ vocal, but he never gets in the way or overplays – it truly is another voice. And speaking of voices, I’ve yet to hear Bains interpret somebody else’s songs. As far as his own go, however, he’s the man to deliver them. He knows where the heart of each and every one of them is.

There are a few songs that had – had – to have been recorded at midnight by their sound and vibe (the weary goodbye of “Everything You Took”; the snapping, biting “Ain’t No Stranger”). And if the stripped-to-the-bone title track wasn’t laid down on a Sunday morning, well, I don’t want to know about it. People spend careers (and a lot of production bucks) trying to sound this soulful.

This is a debut album? Holy ol’ Christ …

Hang on, world: here come Lee Bains III & The Glory Fires.