The Beasts Of Bourbon are Little Animals themselves, being no more beast than your slightly aggressive housecat.

Using Little Animals, their first album with new material in nine years, the Beasts Of Bourbon have tried to take their music in a slightly different direction, dubbing this as their “70’s radio album.” Sadly, it is not fit for radio.

Opening track I Don't Care About Nothing Anymore is a foot-tapping romp with a very bluesy tone. Not a bad song, but sounds rather similar to the next track…. and the next…and the next…

Highlighting the title track especially, the middle of the album is depressing and repetitive, and doesn’t do the band any favours. It epitomises the world-hating tone and the themes of death and hopeless inevitability that carries throughout. Even worse, it’s the longest song!

New Day Of The Dead touches on Kings Of Leon and the Pixies and is the best track on the album. It is echelons above the rest in terms of style, lyrics and theme. No world hating, no nods to underground culture and no trying-too-hard-to-be-cool drug references.

Finishing on Thanks, ironically the first track to be penned for Little Animals, the Beasts of Bourbon slide away into silence. Some may agree that this is where they belong; some may not. This album should be listened to in the drinking sessions that follow gigs where the debauchery and decadence in the lyrics will marry with the weed smoking, bourbon swigging and inevitable destruction to property…that is, if it should be listened to at all.

Little Animals does not sound dissimilar in tone to any of Australia’s other rock exports. The Beasts just do it with more dirt, grime and bad teeth. You can easily pick out elements of newer Aussie rockers like Jet and Wolfmother, as well as the older sounds of AC-DC and Rose Tattoo.