If there is a Melbourne sound, a sound that permeates the sticky carpeted beer barns of the inner suburbs, it’s the sound championed by teen rock ‘n’ roll soldiers Persecution Blues.

The band, featuring Joe O’Mahony, Julian Galgano and brothers Jimi and Elmo Trapani have followed the simple rule; play as many shows as you can and get good. Smashing out as many as three sets a week throughout Melbourne’s inner North, including their home base at the venerable Tote Hotel band room.

It’s fitting that the band should choose that Abbotsford shrine to the dirtiest of riffs as a proving ground, it is in fact the place where the band’s heroes and namesakes The Powder Monkeys slayed crowds on the regular and became the stuff of Melbourne rock ‘n’ roll folk law.

While the band’s sound has a heritage, it’s the fact that they are overlaying this sonic template with the experiences gained living in this modern world that makes them so vital. It’s an unashamed, straight ahead look at life through the eyes of young men who have whole lives ahead of them, but are living like there is in fact no tomorrow. Only tonight, with your mates, in a pub with beer flowing and riffs cranking, it’s both ageless and enthralling.

In between whittling literally hundreds of notches into their live show belts, Persecution Blues hooked up with Melbourne producer and musician Phil Gionfriddo aka Jacky Winter at the old Bakehouse studio in Fitzroy to try and bottle that white hot live sound they had been working so hard to develop. The resulting document Downright Dirty is a 12 track, white-knuckled ride through the front bars and back-alley load ins of Melbourne. A dirty dozen built on filthy riffs, saturated gain and the youthful celebration of all that is good about Australian pub rock.