Dirty Honey right at home – onstage with their own contribution to the genre defining classic double live album.

Release Date: 21st February 2025

Label: Dirt Records

Format: CD / LP / digital

How many bands earn their reputation by a double live album?

CLASSIC LIVE

“To me, live albums have always been the quintessential corner stone for any rock band’s catalogue,” says guitarist John Notto. Quite right too. An opinion voiced also by the famous Mr Slash. Vocalist Marc LaBelle adds his own two penn’orth:  “I grew up on Aerosmith’s A Little South of Sanity, AC/DC’s LIVE, The Stones’ Get Your Ya-Ya’s Out and Zeppelin’s How The West Was Won.” 

Dirty Honey might have already built and earned their reputation on record, along with some incendiary live shows which we here At The Barrier can confirm from experience. We witnessed the mayhem and revelry most recently in Manchester and Leeds so can verify any claims. With the Can’t Find The Brakes album at the core, the timing for their debit live set was perfect.

QUALITY AND QUANTITY

Not quite the expansive ‘double’ live, but with one side of the LP being tracks recorded in North America and the second side featuring tracks from Europe and the UK shows. More quality than quantity, although they don’t skimp with 16 songs that capture a band on fire across a whole tour and right on top of their games. As it should be really.

“We’re Dirty Honey from Los Angeles, California!” LaBelle is up and rabble rousing from the off even as Won’t Take Me Alive has had chance to kick in. And when it does, it’s the first of a roller coaster of memorable bucking riffs emanating from John Notte’s low slung Gibson. Get ready for a slew of memorable utterances: including lapsing into the occasional vernacular.

While the likes of Aerosmith and G’n’R might be shadows of their former selves and the Zep and Free are distant memories or stuff of myth and legend, Dirty Honey are doing a grand job of keeping the philosophy alive. Alive, live and fizzing with an electricity that sees the likes of Heartbreaker totally raw and live – like it would sound in the room with no post match, studio tinkering.

SLEAZE AND FUNK

And while Dirty Honey turn their hands to sleazy Blues rocking on Dirty Mind and a marvelously dirty and funked up version of Tied Up, it’s not all one dimensional. An acoustic diversion comes via Coming Home, and some brief guitar noodling leads into the ‘bringing it down’ moment on Another Last Time that’s very Rod/Faces. The influences are hard to ignore with the chorus of Rolling 7’s is pure Tyler/Perry funk that brings side one to a squealing close

And so as we head across the pond for further evidence, the rolling drums and slowly churning riff see DH head into the new album title track like rampant young bucks. Taking just a pause for some slow Bluesy and emotional indulgence in Roam, the firepower is twisted up to full indulgence

Scars, When I’m Gone and You Make It Alright all head into the seven minute bracket. The latter is the singalong, calm down finale (from Paris) to send everyone home on an even(-sh) keel. Scars is positively threatening in its starkness, recalling the sort of passionate intensity you’d associate with Rival Sons. A couple of minutes guitar soloing is the only concession to showboating and fair do’s when it gives way to the classic stop-start riff that lead When I’m Gone – all “burning cash like gasoline” and “no shelter in the driving rain” and an earworm of a chorus.

THE GIG’S THE PLACE TO BE

The sentiment that the albums are great but the gigs are the place to be comes across loud and clear on Mayhem & Revelry. And as a bonus, watch out for the Mayhem & Revelry Live four-part video documentary, shot over the course of the 60 concerts.

Here’s When I’m Gone:

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