Across nearly a quarter century of work, Danish veterans Volbeat have managed to impress the masses with a genre-flipping heaviness that has encompassed everything from modern metal and hard rock, to punk, rockabilly and country music.
That hellaciously entertaining mix is what’s helped founding vocalist-guitarist Michael Poulsen and the rest of the band rack up a series of international platinum releases, a massive clutch of Modern Rock Chart-dominating singles, and put them on the biggest stages as festival headliners and arena mainstays.
But what’s the Volbeat banger that pleases the fandom the most? The one true outlaw anthem to crank louder than the rest? We asked Revolver readers to rank the Danes’ greatest hits, and these were the top five vote-getters.
“Guitar Gangsters & Cadillac Blood”
“We’re here to ease your pain/Let it all start with a song.”
Volbeat aren’t afraid of getting meta-textual with their metal. Named in reference to a Social Distortion tune and starring a bunch of musical mafioso rolling into cities unknown, “Guitar Gangsters & Cadillac Blood” can be read as a road anthem from the vantage point of a traveling rock & roll band. It’s a pledge to putting it all on the line for the audience. And if you embrace their particular kind of darkness, then they’re sure you’ll all get along.
Sitting somewhere between an Aughts-era garage-rock anthem, a ghoulish errant Misfits track and high-grade Octane metal, the Rock the Rebel / Metal the Devil cut sealed the deal for many Vobeat lifers since its release in 2007.
“Doc Holliday”
While “Doc Holliday” begins with a brief, boot-stompin’-and-banjo-pluckin’ country-western motif, this Outlaw Gentlemen & Shady Ladies standout truly revels in the rest of the song’s more ‘Tallica-tinged mid-tempo pace.
Dedicated to the Wild West’s hard-gamblin’ degenerate dentist of the same name, “Doc Holliday” is a suitably hotheaded, moonshine-swiggin’ livewire that includes a screaming guitar solo we reckon’ approximates “the outlaw man’s roar.”
The pistol-poppin’ tune continues to charm to this day, with fans ranking it rather high in Volbeat’s canon.
“Sad Man’s Tongue”
Volbeat really lap up the rebellious, rockabilly appeal of old-school Johnny Cash on “Sad Man’s Tongue.” It’s a track where Poulsen fully leans into a Man in Black-styled baritone vibrato amid the band’s banjo-fied and knowingly “Folsom Prison Blues”-modeled song structure. But then again, Cash never quite cranked the amps like these Danes do in the chorus.
The fan favorite hints at other hallmarks of the American songbook: a drifter’s lifelong road trip, the power of music, prison stints. While “Sad Man’s Tongue” recklessly walks the line between tribute and country-metal parody, Revolver readers believe that Volbeat take it across the finish line just fine.
“Lola Montez”
Volbeat’s tribute to the titular Lola Montez, a 19th century Irish actor-dancer, isn’t quite as scandalous as their muse’s infamous, skirt-lifting and skin-bearing “Spider Dance.” In fact, the crunch-forward, yet tender-melodied rock song about the Montez’ “utterly erotic” moves may be one of the band’s most approachable anthems — it is, after all, one of many tracks of theirs that soared to the top of Billboard’s Mainstream Rock Chart.
Some 12 years after the band first shouted out Montez, the Outlaw Gentlemen & Shady Ladies single remains a top-draw track in Volbeat’s overall catalog. Sweetly sung and delivered with a touch of moral subversion, it’s hard for the fans to resist getting caught up in its web.
“Still Counting”
It’s a wild gambit to infer in-song that you might be singing to a bunch of assholes, as Poulsen suggests at the top of the beguilingly ska-and-metal-inspired “Still Counting.” Yet — at least according to the voting public— it turns out Volbeat knew how to read the room perfectly in this case. It might be the takes-one-to-know-one mentality of the self-deprecating tune that helps sell it.
The cross-pollination of the Gangsters centerpiece seems to cover anything from checkerboard-Vans-bouncing flair to gun-turret thrash riffing to a pop-punky chorus resolve. And while Mr. Perfect may not exist, per Poulsen’s crooning, “Still Counting” seems to check off all the boxes for Volbeat’s faithful fandom.
Cordially, yet loudly, Volbeat thank them all very much for listening.