Way of the Hoof is Boudain’s first full-length album. Surely the album title must be a piss-take on the band name –or is the band name itself a piss-take? There is a space-pig on the cover after all! Boudain is a dish made from pork sausage, rolled into balls, battered and deep fried, and hails from southern US states cuisine – and these guys just happen to come from Louisiana.

The first two tracks, Sleazy Feats and Neptune, really set the scene – sludgy, stoner opening riffs, which are really catchy. There is a hint of Kyuss to their stylings. The guitar work from Brian Lenard and David Karakach is spot-on.

Another cool track, 3man, again has really catchy guitar riffs and drumming. Wait, is this an instrumental? No, it’s not – we do get some vocals kicking in around the 3:30 mark. This is really enjoyable – just play it loud!

One of their longer songs, Disco Jimmy has powerful down-tuned riffs and some spoken lyrics, which comes across sounding quite menacing. I like it! Bassist/vocalist Chris Porter’s sung lyrics sound stronger on this track – more of that please! Great guitar efforts.

With the last track, Godzilla, I’m not too sure on the pacing of the vocals on this track. They almost sound like a lame rap-but-not-quite effort. The guitars are still good though. Porter’s vocals improve toward the end of the track.

There are a couple of tracks on this album that don’t quite stand out as much as the others. The low, stoner riffs were there, and they were still cool to listen to, but nothing else kicked in to make me go “yeah”!  I shall forgive them as the other tracks are pretty solid.

There are definite Kyuss influences to these guys’ sound, and I’m not complaining.  I’d love to catch Boudain live, I reckon it would be a loud, boozy, sleazy (in the musical sense), rockin’ time! Porter’s voice doesn’t always tend to stand out from the other intrsuments; but it does work really well with the rest within the fuzzy mix.  Most tracks seem to go for no longer than 4-and-a-bit minutes, so this 8 track album seems to be over quite soon – but it’s a great listen.