Release Date August 12th, 2026
Format Digital
Genre Hard Rock
Origin USA
Buzzed & Loaded started as an excuse for tequila. Drummer Buzz Brown and guitarist and vocalist Rob Trosino, friends from Facebook, booked a July 2020 session at a haunted Seattle studio to run through a few covers. Four original songs came out of that first day and the covers were dropped. Bassist Andy Claus joined after the debut and took the spot of Roger Capps, a founding member of Pat Benatar. The band plays hard rock in the arena rock lane of Ted Nugent, KISS and Alice Cooper, and "Medication Nation" is its third album, released through Bootstrap Records. All three albums picked up a Rock Album of the Year nomination at the Josie Music Awards.
Trosino produced the album with the band and mixed and mastered it himself, so a single set of ears made every call. That shows in the guitars, which have the arena shape the genre asks for, and in choruses built to be shouted back with a drink in the air. It also means nobody outside the band checked those calls. Trosino's vocals and Brown's drumming hold the swagger together, and Claus holds the low end steady. Nobody plays sloppy, and nobody plays anything that raises an eyebrow either. The songwriting works from a short list of moves; big riff, big hook, repeat.
Once you spot the pattern the surprises are gone. The pills and medication joke behind the title runs through the lyrics with a wink, and it gets a smile early on. After a few tracks it is the same gag with a fresh label on the bottle, and the concept has no second angle. Originality is thin, and the humor is the only part that belongs to the band alone. The tracks sit close together in style, so the running order offers little contrast. A decent party album that stops at decent. Handy when the bottle is open, forgettable once it is empty.
|6.5
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