Black_Tusk_Geoff_Johnson_2

Black Tusk Takes Care of Business

T.C.B.T. probably stands for “taking care of Black Tusk,” a reference to Elvis Presley’s famed “taking care of business” medallion. That’d make sense, as the Savannah metal trio means business on its sixth full-length album. Other possible meanings of T.C.: Tacocat, if they’re into palindromes, or the truly demonic Titivillus’ Condom.

From the opening metaphysical pep talk titled “A Perfect View of Absolutely Nothing” – it’s way more inspiring than that speech Brad Paisley gave on Hard Knocks to the Cleveland Browns – to album-closing buzzsaw “Burn the Stars,” the band reasserts its spot among the many creative extreme metal acts to hail from Savannah.

The hardcore and crust punkers turned sludge and thrash metal musicians capture the righteous anger of the former and the virtuoso showmanship associated with the latter with the multi-vocal assault of “Lab Rat,” “Ill at Ease” and other cuts of heavy rock ‘n’ roll.

Quite a few tour dates are on tap to promote the band’s Season of Mist release, including dates with Whores. (awesome!) and cartoonish goofs The Casualties (gross!).

Photo by Geoff Johnson.