If a song rocks hard, it’s fully okay to call it “Rock Hard”. That’s what Beyond the Badlands have done and do on their most recent release, The Black Hills Album. Formed by Cuda Smith in 2020 while he was deployed in the military, the guitarist/songwriter formed his group through musicians he met on the internet, and during the pandemic, the group recorded their parts all around the United States (and even in deployed locations in the Middle East).
Their sound hearkens back to classic southern rock, with “Rock Hard” being a particularly banger-worthy track. Geared towards riding down long dusty highways (“Ride to live, that’s what they say”), the song chugs along powerfully, with Rudiger’s gravelly, whiskey-soaked vocal stylings adding the extra horse power to build the song into the free-living anthem it sets out to be.
Hear this ballsy barn-burner in our Banger of the Week playlist!
The Indy Review 