Bite The Buffalo

Move over Black Keys and get ready White Stripes, two brothers from Zambia have moved into IndieRockTown and broken into the biggest house on the block! A two-piece and somewhat recent arrival to the UK, Bite the Buffalo are two brothers born and raised in Zambia, and they brought that unusual upbringing with them they relocated to the UK. With the same stage set-up as the White Stripes (drums, guitar, lead guitar sings lead vocals, drummer sings harmonies), Bite the Buffalo aren’t just another White Stripes rip off. Your Album Doctor is a bass player, so the advent of the two-piece can cause much vexation when a band lacks that instrument, so it takes a rare and excellent quality of musicianship to keep me interested, and this new EP keeps my ears perked the whole time through. And Bite the Buffalo deliver. The production is relatively lo-fi, but still tight; in other words there are down and dirty garage rock moments, but there’s no sacrifice of a quality performance; this is definitely a professionally laid studio recording. The guitar riffs are strong and plentiful, the drumming hard hitting, the vocals have the hint of the Zambian accent blended with British and the recording has done a good job of capturing the raucous energy of their live show. Having had the pleasure of hanging with the brothers during my time in England, drinking in their van before and after shows and getting in all sorts of trouble, I came to realize that these guys have the distinct advantage of having a whole other level of communication that most of us don’t have with our fellow band mates. The longer you play with someone, the better you get at reading their body language and predicting what’s coming up next; but as brothers, these guys have been doing that their whole life. And we all get to reap the benefits with great fuckin’ rock n roll.