'Old Jack' opens this album up with every Ted Nugent fan's dream riff then the big old school band stabs like the '80s never happened before breaking out along that dusty rockola road these dudes are cruising down. 'Smokey Fingers' - um yeah, whatever gents, maybe it's a Southern thing, I don't know.

As the metaphorical needle drops into the groove I find myself thumbing the booklet to have a gander as to what's going on and what State these cowboys are hailing from; yup, facial hair aplenty, check plaid workshirts (standard cut off, or rather torn off, no doubt by two or more bitches fighting over them) but wait a god damn cotton pickin' minute, these Smokey Fingers aren't Southern rebel yellin' mofos at all, they're from Italia! Well burn my leather chaps, you could knock me over with the whiff of a leaky oil can.

Jokes aside there is nothing fishy about these Fingers boys; they clearly love all things Southern and worship at the gun totin' altar of all things the Nuge, Skynyrd and Alabama and do a convincing job of it. With axework widdling and a diddling aplenty and some gang harmonies going on this Devil's dozen has enough slide hollering and beef to convince fans of this genre that Italy has a band worthy of joining the clan of Southern bands. 

The songs are generally long and have big beefy riffs, masculine drumming and enough Coverdale-like singing to keep hard rockin fans happy. You do have to wait 'til track four before the acoustic comes out for that "I'm a cowboy" song that broods before opening up into a full throttle jaunt.

If you're after a bunch of beefy rock songs, old school Southern style, with some big ballads thrown in and a whole heap of authentic hard bluesy rock then take a punt on Smokey Fingers, they can clearly play and know what it takes to appreciate this genre and honour its legacy with empathy and definitely know their way around a style they clearly love. It shows that you can indeed take the style out of Alabama but you can't take Alabama out of the style (or something like that). Hell yeah! Van Zant would be proud of you guys.

www.myspace.com/smokeyfingersband