You Don’t Have to Be Wasted to Enjoy Leather Lung’s Dive-Bar Devil Rock, But It Certainly Helps

There’s a chicken-and-egg issue when it comes to loving metal and getting fucked up. An idea that’s being constantly promoted by cultural puritans and stony straightedge kids is that bands who write songs about liquor, weed, and misbehavin’ ways are selling you some fat, gross bullshit about how much fun it is to poison yourself. But for a man like me, it’s the opposite — I love getting wasted, and know on a guts-deep level the fat, gross beauty of a three-day brannigan with the bottle and the bong, and when I hear a band that capture such an ethos, I feel as though they know me in a personal way. And brothers, sisters, and non-binary siblings in metal, let me tell you, Boston’s Leather Lung know what the fuck I’m about.

While plenty of other bands are the nice bar and grill with the local microbrew and the signed celebrity guest photos, Leather Lung are the wood-paneled dive with the Grand-Dad drink special and the framed hole in the wall from that time Barry and Laser did a bullfighting routine with a bandana and a plastic Viking helmet. The band are truly believable in their adoration of burning herb, crushing tall boys, and driving headfirst into a painting of Man’s Ruin. With lyrics like, “My world is burning down, and I’m pissing gasoline,” these guys are the spiritual muse of the drunken fucko who loses prude friends by spitting beer at them.

If you can’t tell, I’m fucking in love with this band. I can’t recommend them enough. Listen to Leather Lung’s new EP, Dive Bar Devil, below. And while MetalSucks urges you to drink and smoke responsibly, or not at all if that’s not what you’re into — to the dirtbags like me, I urge you: go hard tonight. Pour one out for my birthday, directly into your fucking bloodstream. Feel no pain.