This first reminded me of The Sex Pistols meets Eddie & The Hot Rods meets Peter Tosh meets Sublime. The chug-chug like a diesel train comings & goings of the guitars into laborious bouts of rockinrollin balances the rebel from the lover. By their name I thought for sure this would all be that hard to swallow white boy does it like the Rasta’s sort of deal. Well, kind of right. Nothing terribly special to say about ‘One For The Road’ except that every song is different than the previous. It’s not always a good thing. There are small tinges of reggae, not great reggae, but true to the spirit of reggae, reggae. Who remembers the CLASH? It’s rhetorical people. One thing the Clash were successful at was being accepted into the reggae world. So it’s no surprise that some punks from Dublin would follow the lead the Strummer and the boys laid. Activism in Ireland is nothing new. National Pride and working class wages are still big topics. Anyway, this EP “One for the Road” is good but a little all over the place. I like the touches of Rasta and the wailing guitars of the 80’s cock rock. I like the touching, unity-inspired lyrics but the infusion of them all into one band leaves a little lingering feeling of ‘duh’. The Dubtones could be an awesome band if they stuck to one genre and perfected their own songs within that genre. God knows they are good enough musicians. It’s not for lack of trying the Dubtones will round themselves out one day and I hope I’m here to see it happen.

Ahoy! Ryan Rude

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