(SPV)

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Atlanta’s Nashville Pussy are essentially America’s answer to Motorhead, only with fewer warts and bigger tits. Loud, lewd, crude and unapologetically white trash, they dole out rawk and roll the way it was meant to be played, but rarely is these days.

There’s no pretense or prettiness here. As with their five previous albums, From Hell To Texas is an orgy of smoking, drinking, fighting and fucking — sometimes all at once, as on “Why, Why, Why,” which even throws in a little incestuous aside about catching a wayward girlfriend kissing her uncle in a ditch.

The band aspire to little else than kicking ass, taking names and having as much depraved fun as they can along the way. And where Hendrix wanted merely to “kiss the sky,” Nashville Pussy go for it with more redneck gusto. “I’m gonna get wasted in the stratosphere, then take a shit on the moon,” frontman Blaine Cartwright yowls on “I’m So High.” Nice.

On the gleefully un-PC “Drunk Driving Man,” Cartwright touts DUI as a skill, something not to be avoided, but emulated, practiced and mastered. “He’s just doing it for the kids, he’s the world’s greatest hero,” he boasts of the song’s namesake. And it pays to get good at drinking and driving because, as Cartwright notes later, “Dead Men Can’t Get Drunk.” True, that.

Cartwright and wife Ruyter Suys back it all up with some of the filthiest, sleaziest riffing around — with new drummer Jeremy Thompson and relatively new bassist Karen Cuda laying a solid, steady foundation underneath. The band’s country-fried blend of anthemic metal, southern rock swagger and smoky blues is a perfect match for Cartwright’s down and dirty lyrics. And once again it is kept as raw and raucous as possible through the minimalist production of Daniel Rey, who seemingly just has Nashville Pussy come by, plug in and rock out — which is where the band are at their best, as anyone who’s ever seen them live can attest to.

Like Motorhead, Nashville Pussy aren’t exactly reinventing the wheel here — and, in fact, both bands have pretty much been beating the same drum for years. But so what? Nashville Pussy’s “don’t give a shit” attitude, reverence for the basics and ribald, trailer-park spunk are infectious in a way that most cutting-edge acts would kill for. And when something this simple can rock this hard and make you just want to go apeshit, they’re obviously doing something right. We can all drink to that.

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(4 out of 5 stars)

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