And that’s the vein this album should be taken in-one of a late 60’s, early 70’s experimental project as opposed to a straight-laced 3-chords and the truth-type approach to 3-minute country songs. Though this may be unusual for the country crowd, this isn’t unusual if you go back and look at the output and approach a Frank Zappa would take with his music for example. This approach in itself is an expression of creativity and a new direction for country that is more akin to a Frank Zappa, or Grateful Dead approach, but without the heady, or space jam baggage.Īnd according to Hank3, he wrote, recorded, mixed, and mastered this entire album, along with a completely separate punk album called A Fiendish Threat in 4 months. Forget scaling music for radio play, Brothers of the 4×4 is the country music equivalent to a rock opera, with wide, sweeping, monster undertakings of music, playing out grooves with fiddle, banjo, and guitars trading breaks until their exhaustive end. But then factor in that out of those 16 songs, 9 of them are over 5 minutes, 7 of them are over 6 minutes, 3 of them are over 7 minutes, and one, which happens to be the opening track, clicks in at 8:34. The album contains 16 songs-a big bushel to begin with. The first observation that must be given about Brothers of the 4×4 is just how much music is included here. From his neotraditional days in the early 2000’s when he had traditionalists singing his praises, to his magnum opus Straight to Hell from 2006 that saw his punk and metal influences bleed over into a hard country approach, to his last few releases that have become a polarizing subject with many fans-some still saying he’s the torchbearer and king of underground country, while others speak about the quality issues and lack of diversity in the lyricism. Few things get people talking in the independent channels of country music like a Hank3 release.