Album Review: Evil Eddie - Welcome To Flavour Country

It doesn't get much more Queenslander than the biting wit of Evil Eddie's matter-of-fact tongue spitting venom at Sir Joh and lazily walking us through the hot suburban streets on Welcome To Flavour Country. Keeping the Butterfingers fire burning brightly with 'Evil' Eddie Jacobson's immediately recognisable delivery has helped tide over some longing for the MC and his ever humorous but nonetheless insightful commentary on both our world tucked away here in the south-east corner as well as the surrounding one that hems it in.

Mostly, it's the reprisal of Evil Eddie himself that's the thing to rejoice about here. Far from severing ties with the sound of his former Butterfingers leading role, the acid-tongued gent leaves a trail of bittersweet destruction as he weaves his way through these 13 tracks. The Sir Joh reference in the aptly titled Queensland sits alongside the line, “We grow bananas like Chernobyl grows tumours”. It's that kind of cynicism charging through this bleakly sunny song about our state that runs rampant in Voices In My Head and the messy adolescence of Bad Son. He hurls fellow MCs from Beastie Boys and Zach de la Rocha to Jay Z down the proverbial staircase in Golden Age, making for an amusingly bitter rant about hip hop's glory days, but then changes tack for a more self-indulgent affirmation in (Somebody Say) Evil.

While the ultimate reward is Eddie and his chops, which do bust out some melodic and quite decent singing, the music itself just sits under parity with it; there's sassy funk galore on Fucking Frenzy but it mostly serves as occasional motifs elsewhere instead of enhancing the man.