Billy Batts & the Made Men

Reviews

Billy Batts & the Made Men DCxPC Presents Live, Vol. 41 LP

Here we have Atlanta’s BILLY BATS & THE MADE MEN ripping through 21 tracks of scrappy dual-vocal punk reminiscent of GUTTERMOUTH or even the QUEERS, but not as good. The double vocals keep things interesting; without them, I’m not sure I would have gotten as far as I did. You get what you expect with songs like “Long John Silver’s Feud in Augusta,” “My Job Sucks,” and covers of BLACK FLAG, SUICIDAL TENDENCIES, and…BILLY IDOL. Their drummer Nub Nub rips behind the kit and helps keep it all together, but it does nothing to minimize the juvenile nature of some of the songs. At the end of the day, it’s refreshing to see a young band touring their asses off and giving it their all. While the music isn’t my favorite flavor, you can hear that these dudes rip live and are absolutely doing their part to keep punk young. The more of these DCxPC records that I hear, the more I love them.

Billy Batts & the Made Men My Empire is Crumbling LP

Sixteen shamelessly catchy and pleasantly aggressive pop punk numbers from this Atlanta outfit. I would file this under the dreaded “if you’re into this kind of thing…” heading, but instead I’ll place it in the “I’m not normally into this sort of thing, but…” category. The songs are short, rarely kissing the two-minute mark, and are consistently interesting enough (think PUSRAD erratic mania, just not as fast) that you kinda forget the rote pop punk parts. Joe Queer produced the thing (and that tracks favorably here), and the result hits QUEERS and early Bay Area pop punk buttons nicely while never falling into a rut. A pleasant surprise from Mr. BATTS and his (made) men.