We have a policy at Deep-Hell. A policy that stretches back months, maybe even years in the making. That policy is really, really simple: if you send us your album we will write something about it. Even if you are our brother, a woman on the street, a hot-dog vender / accordion player. The Limit Club sent us an album, so here’s a review of it!

We’ve never mentioned it before, but if you send us an album: We’ll write something about it. We love music and there’s not nearly enough time in the world to listen to enough of it before dying.

IF WE COULD we would make sure our brains stayed active after we died. Deep-Hell dot com, brains from hollowed out skulls sitting in jars with ears. No mouth to scream with but hey, we could listen to any music people played for us until the planet goes up in a ball of fire.

Kid Bitchin’ is the latest album from a Phoenix, Arizona band named The Limit Club. I’ve been close to the band for maybe just a year now. Every time I meet a new musician in that city in the desert, that sand-crusted wasteland we call a metropolis, they conversation goes the same way.

Frequently these musicians are nearing their forties. Many of them were already older than everyone in The Limit Club when they originally started. Now they’re older still, and they always tell me they’re excited to hear that the band is still putting out new albums and playing new spots.

Of the handful of times I’ve listened to Kid Bitchin’ it has always been driving through the southwestern desert. There’s something about rockabilly music that always conjures the image of tall steppes and arid planes. Psychobilly isn’t necessarily rooted here: and yet.

If you go into enough bars on a weekend in Phoenix, if you go into enough of those places with low ceilings, dim lighting and women bartending with faded tattoos across from old out of order arcade machines, you can usually find someone who looks like they belong behind the wheel of an old hot-rod.

whoever took this picture at phoenix new times, thanks! i was too drunk.

Often, that person has been the lead singer of The Limit Club himself: Nick Feratu. Feratu has skin that’s never seen the sun and eyes that I know I’ve seen without sunglasses on but always seem like they’re in shadow anyway. He’s the perfect conductor for the rest of the band when they’re on stage.

When they are on stage, that band with Nick Dave on standup, Miranda on guitar and Nico on drums – they all seem like characters in the perfect southwestern road movie. If I had to name an image that Kid Bitchin’ leaves in my head more than anything, that’s what it is.

Unfortunately there is no motorcycle revenge film starring the band, at least not yet (though here’s hoping they start getting as playful on video as the contemporary rockers Calabrese do). For a drive down a desert highway, I’d say that Kid Bitchin’ definitely forgets the arid climate out here in Arizona.

Standout : Step Into The Fear. A song that opens like a throwback and barrels forward from there. Between Nick Feratu’s bassy Bahaus esque voice urging you to, well step into the fear and the ripping guitar tune filling the back of the song up

Step Into The Fear is probably my standout favorite. Clocking in at only a little over two minutes, it kicks off like a throwback to the older days of bands like The Meteors and barrels forward from there.
Even as a short song, it’s tight and fun and doesn’t overstay its welcome.

Even Minor Swing, a slower paced jam has a fun energy about it that prevents it from seeming like it slows down the tempo of the album too much. Definitely has some of my favorite work on the drums on the album, too. It’s a song that belongs in a movie like Six String Samurai.

Rockabilly music has, to me, always had a close relationship with B-movies and revenge stories because of Six String Samurai and other movies cut from the same cloth. When I talked about the imagery I felt listening to Kid Bitchin’ earlier, I meant it.

Because really: If an album doesn’t help you picture yourself behind the wheel of a ‘55 Chrysler on a long drive through the desert on your way to give someone payback, what is it really good for?

you can see us with the limit club in a greasy alleyway here.