Gerry Jablonski & The Electric band crank up the 105 

Described by Classic Rock magazine as “The best band you’ve never heard of,” Gerry Jablonski and his merry men have, through much hard gigging and touring, established themselves as a heavy blues act everyone should see, and they’ve headlined at the HRH Blues festival plus the Irish Rory Gallagher blues festival, voted UK blues act of the year in 2018 and have completed successful tours across eastern Europe.  

As a word of caution though, to what’s performed on 105,  the emphasis is most definitely on the heavy and not on the blues. 105 is packed with wailing guitar licks, some frantic harmonica playing and a drummer attempting to beat his kit into submission. There’s very little subtlety about the music on this album, there’re no airs and graces here, no sweet harmonies or intricate key or time changes.

There are, however, eight tracks of full-on, in-your-face powerhouse playing, all written by Jablonski, plus one track, ‘Dark Island’, listed as a traditional tune, though in what tradition I’ve no clue as it’s a solo guitar piece with a little distortion added for effect, giving it the feel of Hendrix playing the Star Spangled Banner.

The opening track ‘Breaking Stones’ has a pulsating intro which would put many traditional heavy metal bands in the shade, packed as it is with guitar riffs and harmonica, plus a solid rhythm section laying down a coruscating beat. And this mostly sums up the album, with tracks like ‘Strange Love’, ‘Tiny Thoughts’, ‘Heavy Water’ and the single ‘Goddamn’ all following a similar pattern.

It’s not until ‘Hard Road’ and ‘Breaking The Code’ that the pace relents, and they slow down slightly and inject a touch of blues feeling into the song. ‘Koss’ is dedicated to the late ex-Free man Paul Kossoff with lyrics containing several references to Free songs.

There’s really very little in the way of blues on this album. Adding a harmonica to some fast diddla-diddla guitar playing, as good as the playing is, doesn’t make what’s being played a blues tune, even if Joe Bonamassa seems to think it does. This isn’t to say 105 is a bad album. It isn’t, not at all. The playing from all four guys in the band is good, and there’re some powerhouse performances and strong tunes from a band that probably take no prisoners as a ‘live’ attraction. But this is the blues as seen through the prism of a rock lens.