Rickshaw Billie's Burger -Ca$h Grab Tour with Blue Widow

Rickshaw Billie’s Burger Patrol at Siberia

Rickshaw Billie’s Burger Patrol further the sarcastic tone of their previous album’s title Big Dumb Riffs to double down with Ca$h Grab. The irony here — and perhaps the point — is that Ca$h Grab is the band’s most introspective and lyrically vulnerable songwriting to date.

Of course, the band still bludgeons with thunderous 8-string guitar, growling bass chords and pummeling drums throughout. But these songs are as bassist Aaron Metzdorf explains,“more pop song forward, while still in the idiom of heavy music.”

The album finds the trio — vocalist/guitarist Leo Lydon, drummer Sean St. Germain and bassist/vocalist Metzdorf — expanding their mastery of heavy, hook-filled riffs and rhythms couched in earworm melody that would make Green Album era Weezer jealous. Following the Spartan Primus-meets-Pantera rhythmic ruction in 2 minutes or less of Big Dumb Riffs, the band lets melodies lead the battlefront this time around. In so doing, the lyrics are more personal and revealing, juxtaposed with twisting notes that nod to influences from Built To Spill and Sugar style indie pop to early 90s-era Rush.