Featuring the original Gov’t Mule line up, and standing as a tribute to the band’s late original bass player Allen Woody, Mulennium was recorded New Year’s Eve 1999 at the Roxy Theatre in their Atlanta hometown.
It’s a marathon work out that has lain in the vaults unreleased until now – understandably so, as the previous year’s New Year’s Eve show had just been commemorated on the four-CD set Live With A Little Help From Our Friends.
Adding megawatts metal riffs to the territory they covered in a latter day incarnation of The Allman Brothers, The Mule are never a band for half measures. Boosting their power trio jam band credentials with searing sledgehammer riffs, artillery fire drumming and Warren Hayes lacerating He-Man vocals they are a formidable but sometimes indigestible proposition.
On CD one the haunted shimmer of the mighty Towering Fool offers welcome balm before a post midnight cover assault on King Crimson’s 21st Century Schizoid Man, The Who and a wildly overcooked Dazed And Confused.
However the guest slot section on CDs two and bluegrass flavoured CD three offers more colour. Then recent studio associate Stax Blues legend Little Milton is foregrounded to blistering effect and The Black Crowes’ Audley Freed is on hand to finesse Crowes’ classic Sometimes Salvation. A feast for the fans but the stodge is unavoidable.