Hornet's nest

"As with Hellfire, which was somehow Walker's first new studio effort since 2009, Hornet's Nest features Tom Hambridge has producer, drummer and songwriting partner - and that's, no doubt, a principal reason for the continuity between the two projects. He imbues most everything with a tough muscularity that suits Walker, just as it did on the most recent Hambridge-helmed albums Buddy Guy and James Cotton. And, again like those two earlier legends, Walker's unique instrumental voicings - his guitar is by turns seething and then desperate, salacious or else sad - glues it all together".

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"Today (...) we have oldheads like 64-year-old Joe Louis Walker, who came of age in San Francisco in the late '60s and absorbed influences ranging from B.B. King through Lightnin' Hopkins to Jimi Hendrix and Thelonious Monk, as well as the post-'Bitches Brew' jazz fusionists who exploded onto the scene a few years later. The sounds that galvanized him then remain just as relevant today, and he continues to stake his claimas a forward-looking artist - roots, for him, nourish something that's alive and growing ... Few contemporary blues artists blend aggression, deep felling, and eclecticism with the panache and ferocity of Joe Louis Walker".