Pop Music Reviews : Southern Rock Image From Northern Slab

If you’re a bunch of guys from New York’s East Village, how do you become a convincing kickin’ Southern band? You buy thrift-store vests, for one thing, and authentically tatter an old straw hat. You feature bottleneck guitar solos and affect a redneck accent when you introduce songs. You cultivate scruffy beards (except for the woman on bottleneck, who cultivates a world-weary smile instead). You sing a lot about the open road. And if you’re smart, like new RCA act Raging Slab, you get somebody to call you a cross between Lynyrd Skynyrd and Metallica, then put the quote on your album jacket.

At the Coconut Teaszer on Thursday, Raging Slab didn’t sound much like Skynyrd or Metallica--more like Aerosmith freaks with a couple of Johnny Winter records hidden away--but their ironic take on the whole late-’80s hard-rock thing worked pretty well anyway: tight-tight boogified blues riffs, crunchy hooks and Georgia long-hair vocals. You’ve got to like a band that sings about Geronimo strolling down Fifth Avenue.