THE KILLIGANS: Brown Bottle Hymnal

The Killigans

Brown Bottle Hymnal

© 2006 The Killigans (643157378303)

the killigans blend folk music with punk rock to deliver their own special brew of raucous bar room anthems.

tracks

1 Lullaby for the Working Man
2 The Holy Ground
3 Ballad for My Old Man
4 Story of Tom Mathine
5 Season of my Weakness
6 Radneys Ghost
7 The Old Orange Flute
8 Lessons from the Empty Glass
9 The Road Down
10 Apathetic Notions
11 Desparate Cry

notes

Formed from the ashes of a band known regionally as "Settle for Less", the Killigans came together in 2004 to play roots/folk/irish/americana inspired music with an uptempo feel and carefree attitude. The band is fronted by Brad Hoffman and Chris Nebesniak, the two primary songwriters and driving force behind the band. Two other Nebesniak brothers, Pat and Trevor, play the acordian and bass, and add their insight to both composition and melody. Greg Dank plays the fiddle most of the time and pops in on the mandolin occasionally. Ben Swift provides the rhythmic back-bone with solid drumming.

The band has emassed a loyal fan base in Lincoln, but their reach is far further. Playing regional music festivals, Rib Fest and the Nebraska State Fair, as well as playing shows with national touring acts, has given the Killigans exposure to a wide audience of all ages and backgrounds. The Killigans are also featured on the recent PaddyRock.com compilation, CD Paddy Rock Radio Vol. 1. Using the internet as a means of spreading the Killigans music, they now have fans in Japan and Australia too.

The band released a 4 song EP "the Killigans EP" in 2005, with the full length CD "Brown Bottle Hymnal" following on St. Patty's Day 2006.

reviews

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  • These guys are from Lincoln?
    author: William Fields

    A little weak on the instruments, but getting better everyday, this band has the spirit of Ireland with a decidedly Irish-free populated band. It's my hope they have all the success in the world. We should be lobbying Flogging Molly to put them on the stage next time they're in the area!

  • If you're a fan of the Dropkick Murphys, Flogging Molly or the Pogues, there's n
    author: nick beckius

    It's difficult to think of a time when honest, compelling working-class music has been needed more than right now. In a country ravaged by layoffs, outsourcing and unchecked corporate malfeasance, someone needs to stick up for the serfs who toil for diminishing wages in an age of inflation, the work-hardened proletariats whose blood and sweat lubricates the thankless machinery of capitalism. Enter the Killigans, a seven-piece, Celtic-influenced folk-punk band that is here to let you know you're not alone in your struggles. Brown Bottle Hymnal's first track, "Lullabye for the Working Man," starts off promptly with a joyous accordion melody and crashes in triumphantly with guitars and drums as well as some fine tin whistle work. Brad Hoffman's singing voice, a raspy battle cry that is both stirring and melodic, cuts through the musical fusillade like a scythe and drives his lyrics straight into the listener's consciousness. The theme of the common man's life of labor is revisited in "Ballad for My Old Man," a tragic story of a father who is worked to death, at which point the factory calls his grieving wife and asks for her only son to pick up where his father left off. The storytelling talents of this band aren't limited to the standard fare of hard-luck stories and anthems to galvanize the working class, however. "The Story of Tom Mathine" is a humorous, instantly catchy sing-along about a widely-feared drunken bully who picks a fight with the wrong man, a whiskey-sipping preacher with pugilistic talents, and gets his ass kicked in front of the entire bar. "Radney's Ghost," inspired by a chapter of Moby Dick, is a tale of a man's madness at sea, his visions plagued with images of a lost shipmate. The song rocks back and forth like a rickety ship caught in a furious storm; the group-chants on the chorus sound as if they're being cried out from a beleaguered crew who are desperately trying to maintain control as towering waves crash over the sides of the ship. "Road Down" is a mournful ballad of a heartbroken man who murders his cheating lover and flees down the interstate for an unknown destination, hoping only to escape his sadness and guilt as well as the lawmen who will be coming after him. In addition to the tracks I haven't mentioned for the sake of brevity, the album is rounded out nicely with a lively, banjo-strumming instrumental ("Lessons from the Empty Glass") and new versions of two traditional compositions ("The Old Orange Flute" and "The Holy Ground"). Brown Bottle Hymnal is a magnificent debut from a talented band, devoid of filler and full of hand-clapping, foot-stomping, glass-raising barroom anthems that get better with each listen. If you're a fan of the Dropkick Murphys, Flogging Molly or the Pogues, there's no way you'll be disappointed with this.

  • Dropkick what? Flogging who? Just try and Toss this album!!!
    author: Jarred Frei

    Great for long road trips, drinking in the rain, and beer pong background music. I'd recommend it to everyone and anyone that appreciates true Irish style folk rock, and I have. =P

  • Darn Good
    author: Big Paddy Punk Fan

    Well hello readers, and potential purchasers of this CD. Not quite sure what I could possibly add over the essays above, but the CDBaby people emailed me and said could I please review the CD and last order I rudely ignored that email, but after getting such good service on two different occasions, I figured I'd better this time. Anyway, about the CD - I was blown away by this album - it is darn good and if you are at all taken with this genre of music (and who isn't - our hearts all beat to the manic punk rhythms and our souls soar to Celtic melodies - i.e. we were designed to listen to this stuff), you should buy this CD because its great. I especially love Season of My Weakness. Actually I like every song on this CD and I would buy it except that I've already got it. Obviously.

  • done in the explosive Celtic Rock/Punk sound that The Killigans can only produce
    author: www.paddyrock.com john bowles

    The Killigans "Brown Bottle Hymnal" Self Released The Killigans hasn't been a stranger to Paddy Rock Radio as you know with their track added to our Vol. 1 disc and their airplay on our show. "Brown Bottle Hymnal" is THE recording to beat for this years "Top 20 Celtic Rock & Punk CD's" that we pick every year. Solid throughout with both original and traditional songs done in the explosive Celtic Rock/Punk sound that The Killigans can only produce! With Hoffman's snarling vocals, Chris Nebesniak's grinding guitars, the crash of Ben Swift on drums, and the way that the whole band comes together with fiddle, mandolin, whistle, and accordian.... brings forth an amazing sound that many will try to mimic... and few will ever acheive. Look out Tossers.... start sweating Flogging Molly... The Killigans are coming... and they are bringing an ever growing international following with them! Tracks of interest: "Story of Tom Mathine", "The Old Orange Flute" and "Lullaby For The Working Man".

  • This Album Rocks
    author: Jeff

    The tracks all seem complete, and it has a great sound. The band as a whole rocks, and they can play one heck of a live show. Buy the CD, and go see them live when ever you can. Before you know it these guys will be big, and you won't be able to go see them for just 5 bucks.

  • Good Stuff
    author: W.D.

    Yeah what he said, thumbs up for this one

  • The Killigans have drawn water from the well and are irrigating their own fields
    author: will swan

    Trad-punk six piece The Killigans hail from Nebraska, the American central Great Plains State framed by Bruce Springsteen in his 1982 release of the same name. Perhaps, for many outsiders, Springsteen conclusively established the imagery of the place through his bare lyrics and bleakly romantic cover art, his own vision of a vast and lonely rural America echoed in Tom Waits songs such as ‘Whistle Down The Wind’ and ‘Train Song’. Whatever the case, The Killigans’ debut album Brown Bottle Hymnal shows them steeped in a raw fresh aura of hinterland. They are, perhaps, the only recorded example of an elusive species; the spiritually rural punk band. And punk they are. Although their lyrics would no doubt earn a nod from Steve Earle and Jeff Tweedy, this is not ‘country’ – whatever that is – nor is it the critically-cherished style known as ‘Americana’. The Killigans owe something to Flogging Molly’s electric folk crunch and love of full-throated delivery but the accent is their own. Opening with the jaunty dockyard accordion of ‘Lullaby For The Working Man’, dual vocalists Brad Hoffman and Chris Nebesniak launch into a raucous lament for shafted underdogs that sounds like it could have surfaced in one of Woody Guthrie’s long-lost songbooks. The pace is maintained with The Dubliners’ trad favourite ‘The Holy Ground’, a prayer sung by sailors amongst themselves so that they may return again to the women and taverns that complement their other real addiction; the sea itself. People will still be singing this song in a hundred years and The Killigans understand this quality and do it justice. ‘Ballad For The Working Man’ is another vignette of proletariat frustration and restriction – “ The factory life is all I have, an all inclusive club … I know that I’m just an ordinary man, I’m none too smart” – but still holds onto the hope of defiance, spat out alongside the resentment: “We will rise up, stand up and fight”. The mix has electric and tautly strummed acoustic guitar complementing each other neatly and brings to mind the better Flogging Molly stuff. There’s a hearty toast to The Dropkick Murphys on ‘Story Of Tom Mathine’ with it’s bar room call-and-answer verses and swaying singalong chorus, snare roll-driven pace and bawdy storyline in which the title character – “ a bully and a prick through and through “ – gets his just desserts at the hands of a no-nonsense, hard-drinking preacher. The band takes a detour with the introspective ‘Season Of My Weakness’, a catchy mid-tempo folk rock number. Then it’s sleeves rolled up and straight back into the lowly bars with ‘Radney’s Ghost’, a theatrical pirate yarn of treachery and the cat, inspired by Melville’s Moby Dick: “ Being flogged on the deck was more than he could bear … Rad was dropped with a punch, spouted blood just like a whale “. All signs point to this one being a jawbreaker when played live. The faded but beloved Dubliners and Clancy Brothers records come out again with ‘The Old Orange Flute’, the surreal tale of the fickle Orangeman Bob Williamson who runs off with a Catholic girl, taking his prized - but seemingly possessed - flute with him; try as he might, he can’t get the instrument to play anything but ‘The Protestant Boys’ and so a council of priests burn it at the stake. However, the flute has the last say: “ As the flames soared around, sure it made a quare noise, ‘twas the old flute still playing ‘The Protestant Boys!’ ”. ‘Lessons From The Empty Glass’ is a banjo-led instrumental that sounds like the soundtrack to the most gloriously fun and violent western TV series never made. Then the band really hit the highway with ‘The Old Road Down’, a big, brooding mid-American number that calls to mind Copperhead Road-era Steve Earle; “ Got everything I own inside this Chevrolet, going nowhere and that needle’s dropping fast, that woman broke my heart in St. Louis, shot ‘em both and drove into the west “. The guitars stay cranked for ‘Apathetic Notions’, a curse against the exploitative status quo and the system that leads to “most of us exploited by the rich” not knowing “we’ve put the yoke on our own necks”. But as with their other political songs, there is a flame of hope through making such acknowledgments. The album ends with the desolate and moving ‘ Desperate Cry ‘. This is the sort of song that John Mellencamp may have written if he had joined a punk band - “ Famer stands watching as his crops wilt away … cry out to the Lord God, ‘Help me Jesus I pray! “ - it immediately calls to mind the classic Rain On The Scarecrow. The spare arrangement, using only trumpet and acoustic guitar to accompany Hoffman’s bereft voice, flips the whole album upside down on its head. Brown Bottle Hymnal is a significantly original punk rock release. Hoffman’s capacity to lead and hold a tune rivals the best of them and the lyrics are varied and engaging. It smells as fresh as approaching rain and a cracked can of cold beer. The Killigans have drawn water from the well and are irrigating their own fields.

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