Dirty Honey specialise in something that can sound deceptively simple: four people plugging in, turning up and playing rock songs with swagger.
Their influences are wonderfully transparent – Aerosmith, Led Zeppelin, AC/DC, the Rolling Sones and the Allman Brothers all feature prominently in their musical DNA. The result is blues-based hard rock with big riffs, a gritty vocal and the loose, slightly dangerous feel of a band that would rather capture a great take than polish it into oblivion.
Guitarist John Notto has even described AC/DC and the Stones as examples of the rock tradition he most values. Start with their self-titled debut, particularly ‘When I’m Gone’. If you miss the days when rock music sounded like it was made by people having an extremely good time in a room together, Dirty Honey make a persuasive case for the form still being alive.
It’s rare these days to hear a live album that hasn’t been doctored into oblivion, but Dirty Honey proudly bucks that trend on “Mayhem and Revelry” with a raucous 16-song set that lives up to its name. Culled from the North American and European legs of their Can’t Find the Brakes tour, “Mayhem” captures the California quartet’s infectious blues-rock boogie, with Marc Labelle’s elastic vocals and John Notto’s razor-sharp guitar solos front and centre.
Notto proudly informed UCR that the band did no overdub sessions for the album, but it would be a disservice to describe “Mayhem and Revelry” as “warts and all.” That would imply flubs instead of the tasteful improvisation and ad-libbing on display here — evidence of Dirty Honey’s road-worn chemistry and seemingly inevitable path to world domination.
Few modern rock bands have arrived with the swagger of Dirty Honey. The Los Angeles four-piece broke through in 2019 with “When I’m Gone”, a blues-soaked slice of hard rock that made history as the first song by an unsigned artist to reach the top of America’s Billboard Mainstream Rock chart. Fronted by the charismatic Marc LaBelle, they built on that momentum with their self-titled debut album “Dirty Honey” (2021) and its acclaimed follow-up “Can’t Find the Brakes” (2023), which landed at number two on the Billboard Top Hard Rock Albums chart. A reworked “When I’m Gone” later reached a whole new audience in the 2025 blockbuster A Minecraft Movie.
On stage is where Dirty Honey truly come alive. They’ve built a reputation as one of modern rock’s must-see live acts, sharing bills with the likes of Guns N’ Roses, The Black Crowes, Kiss and Rival Sons, headlining their own sold-out tours, and tearing up UK stages including a storming set at Download Festival. With riffs that nod to the classic rock greats and an energy all their own, they’re keeping proper rock ‘n’ roll alive and kicking.
