Rickshaw Billie’s Burger Patrol
Rickshaw Billie’s Burger Patrol
Truth in advertising is rare in heavy music, but Austin's Rickshaw Billy's Burger Patrol has delivered exactly what they promised: big, dumb riffs. And somehow, in the process of stripping everything down to its most primal elements, they've created something genuinely compelling.
The premise is deceptively simple. Take doom metal's crushing low-end fuzz and sludgy blues backbone, inject it with hardcore punk's brevity and fuck-all attitude, then drain out every ounce of self-seriousness. What remains is 23 minutes of monolithic riffage delivered with the emotional maturity of teenagers who just discovered their dad's beer stash. It shouldn't work this well.
The band—Leo Lydon on 8-string guitar and vocals, Aaron Metzdorf on bass, and Sean St. Germain on drums—has been honing this approach since 2016, but Big Dumb Riffs represents their clearest distillation yet. Eleven tracks, most clocking in under two minutes, each one built around what bassist Metzdorf calls 'the part'—that singular moment in a song that makes you lose your mind. Think the opening of Pantera's 'Primal Concrete Sledge' or the breakdown in Primus' 'Pudding Time,' except stretched out for the entire duration.
Opening track 'Clowntown' establishes the template: head-down chug, tension building, then a sprint into gloriously stupid territory. It's production-polished compared to their earlier Burger Babes from Outer Space material, but the fuzz remains thick enough to chew. Lydon's 8-string guitar and Metzdorf's bass occupy the same monolithic low-end space, creating a wall of distortion that somehow remains rhythmically agile thanks to St. Germain's propulsive drumming.
Then comes '1-800-EAT-SHIT,' the album's undeniable centerpiece and a masterclass in crossover aggression. It's got that early M.O.D. spirit—when thrash metal still had punk's sneer and hadn't yet taken itself seriously. The riff is massive, the vocals are sneering, and the whole thing is over in under two minutes. It's the kind of song designed to turn any room into a circle pit, and it will absolutely get stuck in your head despite (or because of) its juvenile title.
'Papa Pop It' and 'Whip It Around' best exemplify the band's Primus-influenced bounce—that Claypoolish bass work and rhythmic swagger that prioritizes groove over traditional song structure. 'Whip It Around' accomplishes more in its 55 seconds than most bands manage in five minutes, a devastating demonstration of efficiency that drops all pretense to focus purely on physical movement.
But here's where Big Dumb Riffs gets interesting: beneath the beer-soaked bravado lurks genuinely dark thematic content. 'Body Bag' tells the story of someone taking their own life, with the protagonist trying to be 'mama's little twinkle in her eye' before concluding, 'I loved you but you didn't say it back.' 'Papa Pop It,' for all its bouncy rhythmic high, is literally someone daring their father to commit suicide. Album closer 'In a Jar' shifts into semi-doomgaze territory with its patient, wistful delivery of lines like 'I'm gonna fucking kill you,' wrapping murder in a melancholic comedown.
This tension—between crushing heaviness and absurdist humor, between party-metal packaging and legitimately grim subject matter—is what elevates the album beyond novelty. The band isn't being ironic about darkness; they're using humor as a delivery mechanism for genuinely bleak perspectives on suicide, murder, and working-class disillusionment. When 'Blue Collar Man' distills economic frustration into the single line 'But it wasn't the plan for the blue collar man,' it hits harder precisely because it's surrounded by songs called 'Peanut Butter Snack Sticks' and 'El Sapo.'
The production deserves special mention. Where earlier material like Burger Babes sounded 'like listening to a very old vinyl with scratches on acid,' Big Dumb Riffs maintains the essential fuzz while achieving clarity that serves the riffs. You can feel the 'almost unusable string tension' the band tuned down to, hear every chunk of the palm-muted breakdowns, and still get crushed by the low-end. It's professional without being sanitized.
The band's stated philosophy—'Being a dingus is crucial to the groove'—might sound flippant, but it's actually a radical rejection of doom metal's often po-faced solemnity. By refusing to take themselves seriously while playing music this heavy, Rickshaw Billy's Burger Patrol has accidentally stumbled onto something vital: heaviness doesn't require gravitas. Sometimes the most honest response to an absurd world is to play crushing riffs about absolutely nothing.
At 23 minutes, Big Dumb Riffs respects your time while demanding total physical commitment. It's an album designed for movement, for losing yourself in the chug, for embracing simplicity as a creative choice rather than a limitation. In an era where metal increasingly fetishizes complexity and runtime, there's something refreshing about three dudes committing fully to the bit: play heavy, play dumb, get in, get out.
Big Dumb Riffs is exactly what it claims to be, which makes it smarter than it has any right to be. It's stoner doom for people who don't do drugs, sludge metal for the perpetually unserious, and a middle finger to anyone who thinks heaviness requires pretense. Fuck around and find yourself, indeed.
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Upcoming: Tickets go on sale TODAY (February 13). You can find links here: 2026 Show Tickets
