The prevailing tone I'm getting early on… and presumably most of the rest of the way is the Sabbathy-overtones-the grim and grinding, the sallow strains off in the distance, the nightmare lurking just beyond the gravestone-doom and dread manifest your easy listening climate with a sudden surge that sends ya shuddering clear back to 1970…

But then, to mirror Fireball Ministry or anyone else to Sabbath is an injustice since nobody has or probably ever will do Sabbath again as well as Sheavy-in fact I don't think even the old blokes themselves could come back to sound any more vintage themselves.

But back to Fireball Ministry, something of a double negative for a name but goes down very well for this riff-lifting, chugging, smoke belching classic rider that's honed closely to the late sixties / early seventies era pedal pushing, desert dwelling, light trippers of a bygone era, lately resurrected however with a more serious knack.

First three tunes on the disc are all originals, "King," "Choker," and "Maidens of Venus," the best and most jam-inspired of the root-lifting bunch, before paying homage to their illustrious Rock & Roll forefathers, beginning with a stately version of Alice's "Muscle of Love," a fearful version of the Priest classic "Victim of Changes…" and some ten minutes and a few more hits later we're ready for-drum roll-the bonus tracks!

Give 'em points for that anyway, basically an EP release that features bonus tracks-and not just any old shoe-they kick off with a conscientious version of Blue Cheer's "Fortunes," and here's a kicker, The Misfits' "Cough/Cool," which somehow fits in with all the rest, badly, before a closing Aerosmith tune, "Movin' Out," which adds to the quick rising cloud of dust that first began forming about five songs ago.

This woke me up… at first what are you going to really go by when you've got all of three new tunes to base an opinion on and they're doing this Grand Funk meets Raging Slab stuff that's been done before, been done again and been done to death… so here's the breakdown-there isn't one.

They're solid all the way through, but the cover tunes show a surprising versatility that better details what this band could be capable of…

Released by Small Stone Records