Finns? Playing heavy metal on banjo and mandolin? You've gotta be kidding...

Alas, if this somehow doesn't sound enticing, well the joke's on you. An example of a You Tube joke gone horribly wrong or horribly right, depending on your point of view, Steve'n'Seagulls were founded in pretty much the same way as their viral success came to be: A happy accident. All five original members (bass player and drummer have since been switched) living and playing in different musical outfits in the Finnish town of Jyvaskyla were brought together because they all had dabbled in country/bluegrass instruments and a promoter was looking for an opening act for a country-western show. Steve'n'Seagulls were born! 

In between the goofy but awesome name and the goofy but respectful and, above all, fun takes on rock'n'roll classics in a bluegrass style, there is something here. Steve'n'Seagulls didn't do this first (bands like Hayseed Dixie had been doing blurgrass covers of hard rock songs for years), and I don't know if they do it best, but there's definitely quite a bit of fun to be had with this. The joke is probably wearing thin over the four albums the band released, but for an hour and change, the running time of Farmageddon, this is fine. 

Arrangements are tight and lively. In terms of song choices, I stuck with 'the big ones', having classics from about 25 years of rock'n'roll back to back to back to etc. from the likes of AC/DC, Led Zeppelin, Guns'n'Roses, Kiss, Metallica, Nirvana, ZZ Top, and others, because half the fun is recognizing the song and then see what the crazy Finns did with it. I hesitated between the 'live' takes on Youtube that made them a viral hit back in the days and the studio versions, but finally stuck with the studio versions for a unified sound, though I did add the original video version of "Thunderstruck" as a bonus track at the end. And in case you're wondering, "My Maria" is a band original, one which I really liked. It's the brain child of Herman Da German, the band's banjo player who takes lead vocals onit, as he does for the  ballads and slower songs, while lead singer Remmel takes care of the uptempo songs. The other sort of 'wildcard' track on Farmageddon, a cover of Angelo Badalamenti's "Twin Peaks Theme" is a Herman solo joint. 

You know that the One Buck Guy likes to rock, yeah! (yes, he does! yes, he does!). And if you've been here more than once or twice, you know that he loves country music in all its forms. So the combination of rock and bluegrass was, like Thanos, inevitable. So, as the guys from Steve'n'Seagulls would say: Rokataan!