Somewhere in the beginning of the nineties when grunge was mainstream and heavy metal was not done, a band was formed and started to create a completely new style of crossover music. With the release of Snappin Necks Stuck Mojo became a phenomenon for some and a riddle to others. With the right in your face attitude and brutal songs they smacked you right in the face. Sadly enough Stuck Mojo disbanded in 2000 due to label problems.

 

Five years later I was able to see them live when they embarked on a 17 date tour across Europe. It was great to finally hear songs like ‘Rising’, ‘Snappin Necks’ and ‘Southern Pride’ live. Now, several years later the new album of Stuck Mojo called Southern Born Killers is released after the band first had posted it online.

 

Starting with the patriotic song ´I’m American´ it’s clear there’s still a lot of southern pride present within Stuck Mojo. At least one point they still stand for, but besides that, ´I’m American´ is most of all a Stuck Mojo song with a grooving rhythm and great solos from Rich Ward. The only thing I miss a bit on this song are the vocals of Bonz. Don’t get me wrong, Lord Nelson does a great job on this one but Bonz has a more aggressive spit in his vocals. He gave a lot of songs much more aggressiveness and you would literally step back when he started to sing.

 

During the rest of the album I had to raise my eyebrow from time to time. With ´The Sky Is Falling´, with a prominent role for Rich in the vocals, you can almost say Stuck Mojo created a radio friendly song. ´For The Cause Of Allah´ is a totally different track. A spoken word of Walid Shoebat, which is a former PLO terrorist and born again christian, about the Islam ,the state of Israel and other related topics. Not my idea of creating sympathy for certain topics but on the other hand it shows that Stuck Mojo has the guts to do so.

 

In the end I have some mixed up feelings about Southern Born Killers. There are some great Stuck Mojo songs on the album that kick ass like they used to, just listen to ´I’m American´, ´Southern Born Killers´ and ´Metal Is Dead´ and you know what I mean. On the other hand there are songs like ´Yoko´, ´Open Season´ and ´Prelude To Anger‘ that are below Stuck Mojo standard. Add to this the spoken word part and I have to conclude that Southern Born Killers isn’t really my idea of a great Stuck Mojo album.