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Train Kept-A-Rollin,' the first video clip from "Ready For Judgement Day," the debut album by Blues Karloff.

Steeped in the tradition of Leslie West’s Mountain, The Jeff Beck Group and early Led Zeppelin, Blues Karloff throw down some of the hardest-edged Rock and Blues grooves on the planet.

A few years after World War II, Chicago Bluesmen like Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, Buddy Guy and Otis Rush – after having directly derived their style from the Mississippi Delta tradition of Charley Patton and Robert Johnson – plugged in their guitars, added drums and suddenly they had invented a new, exciting, powerful form that redefined Blues and gave it one of its most enduring and successful forms. Electric Blues was later adopted in various areas of America leading to the development of regional subgenres such as Texas Blues, of which notably Freddie King was a significant exponent. When by the mid-sixties most major music labels in America had given up on the Blues, white British Blues bands like The Rolling Stones, Peter Green’s Fleetwood Mac, John Mayall & His Bluesbreakers and later Cream and Led Zeppelin re-exported the Blues back across the Atlantic, but with a very distinct Rock influence.

Blues Karloff salutes some of the Blues legends that every member of Blues Karloff has been listening to since childhood. The album features songs by Robert Johnson, Jimmy Reed, John Lee Hooker, Albert King, Howlin’ Wolf, and Muddy Waters; vintage Blues gems revisited, like the British Blues-Rock greats such the Rolling Stones, Savoy Brown, Free, and Eric Clapton with the Yardbirds did back in the sixties and seventies. Blues Karloff is all about these musical influences; Black and White, British and American, that shaped the musical tastes of the individual band members in their youth.

On “Ready For Judgement Day” Blues Karloff serve up a powerful blast of hard rocking Blues; each track road tested and fine-tuned in neighbourhood bars and clubs – most places without a stage, lighting or sound support. If any song failed to connect with the audience of which the majority wasn’t even familiar with these classic Chicago Blues tracks reinterpreted by the band in their own distinctive fashion, then the song was soon dropped from the repertoire. The entire process took three years to complete and the result is nothing less than a scorching and hellacious hard rocking Blues extravaganza!

Originally Blues Karloff was formed by guitarist Fonzie Verdickt and drummer Georges Milikan. Over a three year period half a dozen or so vocalists, bass players and lead guitar players were tried, tested and left by the wayside until a little over a year ago the line-up stabilized with Frans Ruzicka on bass, Alfie Falckenbach on vocals, and Paul “Shorty” Van Camp on lead guitar. The latter a Blues-Rock player with “Mothers Of Track” in the 70s, Shorty became celebrated on Planet Hard Rock during the 80s as front-man-guitarist-singer and writer for Killer, one of the premier continental Heavy Metal bands to emerge from the early eighties “New Wave Of Heavy Metal (NWOBHM) scene. Now, in the footsteps of another of his heroes, the late great Gary Moore, Shorty is going “Back To The Blues.”

Last but not least, ”Ready For Judgement Day” was mixed and mastered by none other than Australian Rob Tognoni, one of the most uncompromising virtuoso Blues-Rock guitarists in the world, further elevating this album above the competition.