One Million New CD Reviews.
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Apache
Boomtown Gems
Birdman

San Fransicko partying pouters come in compact fun-sized packet that yuss, early seventies camporamic glam in any damn colour you want, darling, and a few yet to be invented. Bypass any notion of the similarities to Bob Geldof’s Rats, though there is slight resemblance to their superb second Tonic For The Troops album, and    never once will you have to pause to reflect on what one tit or tat was nicked from (well, ok not exactly true but you gonna argue with Wolly Bully or Psychotic Reaction) though you can place them proudly in the silkily polka dot n’ paisley pantheon of Brats, Dolls, Ramones, Alice, even The Gun Club and biker fumes. Snarling n sniping this is a swaggering glitterball from gutter to groin that will make you touch your hips and maybe even wish they’d let you.

Stu Gibson

Asia
Phoenix

Frontiers

Pointlessly rising again. Let us pray for a musical continental drift to ensure this resurrection is choked on, which would be about the only rock action this load of overwrought cobblers would come anywhere near. However it’s worth a download listen for the sheer incomprehension that will crease yours and your compadres faces, as you frantically quiz each other as to how in your worst personal hell such songs can be constructed, and query your recent drug intake. Other than that this set of horseshit makes absolutely no sense, possibly not even to accountants, though don’t get me started on them, though it is hilarious and makes Magnum seem reticent to use the preposterous pedal.

Stu Gibson

Bedford Falls
Savings And Loan
Boss Tuneage

The subtitle “More sad songs about girls” says it all really, for this ain’t no staunch-shouldered, mean-eyed caterwaul through country dirt-roads and the suffocating stench of cantankerous back-alleys poured out from bottles of heartbreak and unbeckoned beauty between slugs of squandered romance and bumps of whatever shit the bloke round the block reckons he’s holding. Nope, it’s drab indie rock from the same neck of the woods that should be silenced for ever by marauding groups of musical einsatzgruppen following this scrawl as Spastic Sheep Bleaters that can’t even muster the manhood to be screamo, for FUCK’S sake (or lack of). I’m sure their parents and whatever woe-hungry wallflowers that pass as friends relish their tender hearts but, intone with me a la Eldritch – ‘Get real…get another’. If you come across this just check the crap cover shot of the guys’ pitiful not worth a shrug shoes and judge it forthwith, then buy me a drink if we should ever meet, for saving you a fiver and a gainless half hour (or half-minute) or so.  The credit crunch should close such kak down. Man. Though I doubt it, this is the sort of dreck that causes spontaneous masturbatory convulsions in the checked-coat, cord-wearing, beard stroking cum-guzzling South Manchester (talkin’ ‘bout you, Chorlton) café bar scene.

Stu Gibson

Birds Of Avalon
Bazaar Bazaar
 
Volcom

Formed from the ashes of dark-cloud garage groove-psych-grinders The Cherry Valence, couple Cheetie Kumar and Paul Siler continue traversing a willfully winding road. Or two, even three in this case, for they have indulged the false idol of pompous psychedelia, the pontificating piles-forming nonce of the kind that forgets all sage advice about carrying protection and births prog from its swollen girth. Praise be they largely leave the long, arduous parts behind and those aforementioned ashes fall more between the spliff and mushroom cloud rather than those of the weary wishbone variety. There’s still too much Led Zep lethargy and even Grateful Dead, though, which means Yours Stuly can only really cop you some of this if you want to formulate whether you hate fucking heads (still) or not. Largely concise clutters of choruses and squiggly interludes they may be but don’t be thinking that with the tedious though cutely appositely–titled Instant Coma they’re on some sort of door to door sales jaunt selling the Encyclopedia Apocalyptica, cos they’re really striving to connect with their inner-seventies child. Or worse, on Think, their inner late-sixties Beatle. Something even cranked up choogles like Taking Trains can’t stop. Do, however, burn the Sabbath resting on the Lords day magic carpet ride that is the mighty opulence of Horse Called Dust, from whence cities and whole civilizations could arise. There’d just need to be one holy hula dance-fest with a phalanx of Salma Hayek’s and Jemima Roper’s of a civil war first. But rock’ll always ride out, right? Right??? 

Stu Gibson  

Born To Lose
Saints Gone Wrong

People Like You

Texan terrors BTL are back with another back-bar room of brawling, sea-faring, ocean-bound anthems with which to barricade the doors for another lock-in littered with the detritus of late-nights, shore leave fall outs and last minute failures. Chris Klinck’s vocals are amongst the most stirring, and that’s soul-stirring, and affecting in rock’n’roll never mind the street punk niche people’d love to keep ‘em boxed into, and, backed up by the beefy, bull-horn steaks of his four hombres hewing a no limits suction-pump of hardcore and squealing rock guitar like some soul-dredging dialysis machine, these guys are no slightly built bunch of ‘woah-oh-ohh’ merchants whose table’s for the taking with the littlest touch. Under such rapturous sheets these songs, and this band, work as they’re either blessed with, or well aware of, their great (musical anyway) state’s lineage and it’s not such a leap of faith to picture Texan troubadours such as Townes Van Zandt or Steve Earle picking out tracks like Soundtrack or Ante Up (Or Roll Over And Die). No false posturing or by numbers brigandage but some well-considered and often beautiful diatribes and salutations to situations attestable to from experience, experience that resounds round your leaderless, rally-call hungry soul, not much apparent these days but Born To Lose can be as profound as the are a pounding, sensory padded-cell cataclysm. THAT’s punk rock, should you need a slap as a reminder. And let’s face it, you, me, your best pal, all probably fucking do round about now, eh? Powerful mojo.

Stu Gibson

UK Subs
Warhead

Jet13

Featuring five blistering audio tracks and a live video of the title track, UK Subs brand new release is a classic.  ‘I Live In A Car’ and ‘Warhead’ are both new versions of familiar tracks from the ‘Subs chart-storming golden era, whilst ‘Straighten Out’ is a more dynamic mix of the b-side from a couple of years ago.  Meanwhile, the two new songs ‘Knuckleduster’ and ‘Creation’ sound great and even though these legends of punk have nothing to prove, they still sound as though they’re writing and playing as if their lives depended on it.

 Anyone who has followed this band is aware of the revolving door of musicians who have come and gone over the years, but this is the second new release in a row to feature main-stay frontman Charlie Harper plus Jet on guitar, Brian Barnes on bass and Jamie on drums.   And what a band they are, bringing the UK Subs sound alive and kicking into the punk n’ roll naughties, whilst maintaining the original simplistic charm of the original sound. 

If you like the UK Subs as a live band but find the production of some of the original recordings a bit flat then check this out.  Put simply it sounds like we knew the ‘Subs studio recordings always could have and should have, thanks to a great production from Stan Standen from Demented Are Go, who previously worked on the ‘Suns last single and also mastered The Eruptors debut album. 

Recommended for old punks and younger rockers alike, whether your first gig was seeing the Sex Pistols at the 100 Club or Backyard Babies at King’s Cross Water Rats, you’re going to enjoy this.  High octane, raw power.  Crank it up!

Alex Eruptor

Hollywood Brats
Hollywood Brats

Cherry Red

Audience attendee aka twat walking right into a tongue-lashing – “You sound like an abortion.”

Andrew Matheson, Brat, twat maybe but honour this – “That’s ok pal, you look like one.”

Stomping outta the early seventies glam-slam glum-slum of Lahnden in a parallel slime-light with the Dolls in possibly one of the strangest synchronious misalignments in any world that’s ever been worth writing n wanking about, not just music - history. Yes it’s that fuckaluckadingdongingly important. This is no ‘oooh look at that Elvis chappie, let’s sign Cliff Richard’, nose-missing by a million lines, this is as grimy and ecstatically sticky and trashed as their Queens brothers. Sure, one was a Scandinavian (Casino Steele, who went onto quiet punk legendary status by forming the glorious legless but never lug-hole-less grievous under-achievers The Boys – who later sped up Sick On You - without which there’d be no Crybabys, and that’s not worth contemplating), one was a Canadian (Andrew Matheson) with a mouth wider and dirtier than The Thames but, whatever, Chez Maximes is quite simply one of the greatest dancefloor fucks ever, a thousand of Ronnie Wood’s best Faces riffs having absolutely no tough choice over who they’re staying with, as they lurch off home with the sloppy seconds shoplifted from Mott The Hoople in the corner store, purchasing skins and perusing scant shelves of the UK’s seventies discontent in their silks, Tumble With Me sounds like it got jacked, juiced, spilled, thrilled but never jaded at those ’72 Dolls sessions with Billy Doll on drumslumps, Zurich 17 is an Everly’s-era cutesy camp droll that Thunders woulda, umm, died for, as under-produced by a spindly wisp of Phil Spector’s 1960 stubble, and could disarmingly make every tough-shouldered, high-collared rocker weep, at once sarcastic yet care-soothingly cute-some, where Southern Belles would imperiously keep it’s sticky fingers away from any grabbing Stone, whipping the lords off back to their manors. Unusually for Cherry Red this is just a straight reissue. Coupled with the lost second album sessions, or whatever scabs there are out there (what? You think I researched this, c’mon!) tracks of which surfaced on a Casino Steele comp a while back so they are salvageable, would be just icing on this mostly wonderful cake.

Stu Gibson

Hydrogyn
Deadly Passions
DR2
Demolition

Beckoning you back to the pre-Riot grrl eighties with a come hither flick of the hair and crotch-coaxing index finger to a world festooned with Doro Pesch posters, Pandora Peroxide in her prime, moving nascent stonewashed blue-jean bulges unwittingly to back rows come these Kentucky cock-crowers. On a backing band bed of rose-cheeked removal men huffing and puffing heroically under their open leather waistcoats, no frills feisty fille leading lady Julie Westlake belts through siege-openers Rejection and On And On, with an almost Saraya–like bluesy metal sludge that with Your Life and Deadly Passions provide a pouting pedestal for the rather large vocal cords and larynx kept shrouded under those huge airbrushed eighties tits. Covering Alanis Dog Biscuits’ You Oughta Know isn’t really forgiveable - maybe it confirms she’s really a similarly strong woman, despite being sprawled un-Alanis-ly about the place, maybe it’s to get up Alanis’ nose, but I suspect hit single fodder holds court here. Whatever, it certainly marks a halfway point where quality control can’t be cajoled out of a traffic ticket like old Patrolman Perkins as the heavy-Heart ballads Candles Light Your Face and inexcusable lame-ass llama-fest Shadow feature heavily and the promiscuous riff on Seroquil gets wasted, endings it’s teenage wasteland years rather more a frustrated flirt that the jock-flicking fox-trap it fantasises about in the office. Though I guess for all its easily lambastable failings it’s at least more forward-than follies like Vixen and Phantom Blue.

Stu Gibson

Jon Cleary and The Absolute Monster Gentlemen
Mo Hippa Live

FHQ

Sessionista satellite with the likes of B.B. King and Taj Mahal on his flighty-fingered credits and a mainstay of Bonnie Raitt’s touring band, ivory-itcher Cleary unfurls some swamp-funk blues from the Mississippi banks. A tad too demonstrative of a muso masterclass at times, what with the body-popping six-string bass and all songs bar the stooped sweat home of Cheatin’ On You stretched out beyond the six-minute mark, for those hankering for the hoodoo haunches of the N’Orlins stew the likes of Dr John and Professor Longhair stirred up and almost succumbed to. It may filter down from those fabled banks but the waters seem waved at touristically rather than waded in with abandonment, though, there’s no denying the prowess of the man’s pianner pinkies and pokers on the glorious solo boogie spot on C’mon Second Line and on the aforelysaid Longhair’s timeless Tipitina. File under interesting as opposed to scintillating as the sleeve promised.

Stu Gibson

Jubilee
Rebel Hiss
Buddyhead

This 4 piece LA rescue ex bit-parters from their respective cameos, culled as they are from Wires On Fire (Michael Shuman - yeah I thought that too - who can also mention QOTSA to his unemployment officer, and Evan Weiss) and NIN / The Icarus Line in front celebrator Aaron North, plus a veritable motley crew of drummers from A Perfect Citcle’s Josh Freese to The Willowz Loren Humphry and rumour has it even Josh Homme and Bauhaus’ Kevin Haskins. So is all the back-slapping and protestations of being a real band, man, not one of those stinky side projects worth the laser usage for this disc. Well, there’s signs of striving for new identities yet they risk ending stuck in the mire of identikit bands straining to straddle the divides as suggested in their intended influences from Replacements (surely asking for ire?!), to Blur (definitely if used in the same sentence!), The Verve (ditto. Thricely!), Neil Young (need I go on??), Creedence (bit late in the day now), Jane’s Addiction and Dylan (I went).

Stu Gibson  

Lauren Harris
Calm Before The Storm
DR2
Demolition

A debut album from Iron Maiden headman Steve’s daughter is sure gonna catch equal squeals of delight and derision. Apparently spotted by legendary Brit prodcer / writer / berk who brought us Since You’ve Been Gone Russ Ballard (who knew nought of the family connection sayeth the legends and heralds), Harris and her band of repr-oap-bates lay down some stadium ready, rock radio friendly, if not overly amorous, riffing with the practiced eye of former ruffians, perfect fit for the menopausal metal set on their nostalgia retirement farms running their estate ragged in their new Range Rovers before racing through suburbia for the Sunday papers. Hurtling to mediocrity and adequate this slab of marketing-man rock concocted over many a smorgasboardroom meeting, or orgy, was written by a team almost resembling a supermarket check-out section when the students are back in town, surely one is an advisor to MTV, another a consultant to whichever teen soap channel de jour. As it stands, the lady doth have a strong voice, though one lacking personality and charisma, which would carry this record into the chapters of kook-dom. So it’ll surely be adored by many looking for something a bit edgier than Bon Jovi to raise toasts to their misspent youth, or the older teen independent girl now Avril’s got hitched and Harry, well, it would insult this ‘arry to go quite that far! A perfect, cheekboned, sculpted example of one critic, or cynic’s, classic being anothers cliché. Harry will be soooo jealous.

Stu Gibson 

Mudhoney
Superfuzz Bigmuff Deluxe Edition
 
Subpop

“Spill my seed – Suck my waste”

This twentieth anniversary two-CD set is as monstrous and colossal a goatfuck (cheers, el Coen Brothers!) as it was hearing the sick sludge of Touch Me I’m Sick or In ‘n’ Out Of Grace steaming and scything through some clubs’ sound system or skanky mate’s long suffering seventy quid stereo for the first time of many. Expanding on the original six-track shrug that slid outta Shitstain, Seattle, like an apologetic turd down your thigh in front of your first girlfriend’s parents, this is now a remastered (ha ha!!) 32-track torrent of small-town torments and tragic accident, Grinding garage–band mentality with Sabbath’s jaw-slackening apocaslippeddisco, Stooges stun-gunning scatalogy and the cartoon malevolence of America’s early eighties hardcore heroes from The Melvins to The Replacements, Mudhoney were similar likeable, lanky-haired losers standing (barely) unpretentiously and gloriously from the locker room to mall to, yup, garage. While sure as a stoner’s wisdom and a drunk’s steady hand, the second disc comprises kinda inconsequential though sloopendous live slop of slight interest the first disc is the essential holy fuck of what grunted at the world as grunge, and still scrapes with broken fingernails the weasly entrails of those much more famous sons of that little town, but then even TAD did that. The intro to Touch Me… can still make you come and shit almost at once (accidentally wrong sentence structure??) like some GG Allin gang-bang with Angus Young and a young Paul Westerberg in Beer For Breakfast slob-glory. Sod it, most of these early tracks can. Crawl amidst the gut-fisting suffocation of Mudride and smear yourself some new murals, muchacho-chistas, as the disemboweling and retinal prolapsing bass squelches all over No One Has. Furious, passionate, dysfunctional, aggressively pathetic, nerdy yet nastily resentful, desperate and anguished, the likes of Need, Chain That Door and Twenty Four along with the harrowing If I Think (prefiguring the raggedly majestic By Her Own Hand and When Tomorrow Hits from the following years even greater, and grebo-er, self-titled debut muck) and the couldn’t give not get a fuck lurch of You Got It (Keep It Outta My Face) along with Hate The Police showcasing their sluurrrred-pop capabilities…if they rarely captured such low-down grime again just ask how many no-hoping thirteen-(shit)can caners with stomach cramps and colostomised brain-cells never mind coagulating nerve endings could ever happen ‘pon such degrading delights in the sick swamps of their darkest desires.

Stu Gibson

Romeo Must Die
Defined By Enemies In At The Deep End
IATDE

Hail! Hail! Rock’n’Roll!? No, but this IS massive metal with balls bigger than Valhalla and all the halls of hell only gearing up to do battle, well, with any fucker, by the sounds of this testosterific seven-track onslaught from the vocals and bassist behind UK stalwarts Stampin’ Ground. In fact, it smashes those old wart wounds like giant Cyclops on spacehoppers. Tumultuous thrashing to make the cheekiest cunt clam up except to emit occasional squawks from various prolapsing and herniating organs, orifices and clenched muscle walls with pincer movements of rhythmic vampire riffs raising stakes made of rib-cages to festoon with bass-drums like grizzly bears belly-flopping on your face, salmon-ising your insides in an instant, forcing their clenched fist and every supple sinew from elbow to shoulder into the vanguard of the new wave of British FUCKING Metal, that shall not be thwarted.

Stu Gibson

The 222s
Montreal
Punk 78 – 81
Sonik’s Chicken Shrimp

Casually proving the lie (along with current miscreants Chop Suicide) that Canadians aren’t just a set of bear friendly rubes higher on the boring barometer than their self-imposed British cousins and notable (along with the French) for being entirely culpable for the cuntsoup spawned from the too-toothy traps and sandpaper faces famous for crimes even against the most foul of coffee table music, The 222s basically downed tools on the detention breadline, got all dolled up and appear to have glitzed, ritzed and (Donna’d and...?) blitzed like heroes for a few years, before getting go go gone, faced with the moronic musical climate that juiced and lubed itself over the likes of Supertramp and Kansas. Destiny sure is one wonky-racked n’ deranged bitch. They shoulda come to the Motherland rather than mong in their home city in a state. Ten years or so later times two, a fellow set of fag-hounds suffered a similar fate in old London town though anyway, with the Soho Roses blurry buzzsaw glam-punk traeshthetic hobbling gallantly into obscurity, despite their Third And Final Insult being one of the greatest records ever. This isn’t, mind, but such details are always worth a mention.   

They certainly played like heroes anyway if this slutty knees up and wide apart slew of home and live recordings is anything to go on. These flurries from some DollsCooperCounty summercamp of smut-struttin’ (sorry, lass) masterclasses veer magically wide of many marks and have little wings causing whimsical little flurries in your hearts, fizzing like cherry bombs in your sticky pants (is that bubblegum, boy?) from Female (‘You look like a female but you fuck like a man’) and Hold Up to Academic Drop. A veritably slippy, sloppy, ritzy, ribald and rampant history from rawk’n’roll’s rapacious slag-heaps, just the way we like it.

Stu Gibson

The Turnpike Cruisers
Rockin’ Possessed 1984-1986
Cherry Red

Here hauled roughly out of their unfair consignment to the rockin’ rubbish heap, the psychobilly scrap-pit, this six or so piece screw-loose cruise machine crammed a whole pit-wrecking clash of influences, not least a brass section, some funkier rhythms than the frantic ram-attack of most psycho sewer-suckers, and a sly sense of humour (from Palookaville Express ‘I was hanging out my clothes, well most of ‘em were mine / In fact a couple were Joe’s’ and the B-Movie kitsch cock-up The Girl Who Turned Into A Man) along with the ability to kick-back from the crunch pedal crutch. Maybe it shows the game of chance of the music scene in the trench-stench, perhaps the confinements of the psycho scene they criss-crossed ‘cos on the evidence of this fleshed-out to full-lengther they could cut it, and verily cut it like ‘it’ was some refrigerated slab of butter they sliced through as though it was mustard. Containing tracks from the two EP’s they released before their two actual albums Sleaze Attack At The Edge City Drive In and Drive Drive Drive, along with compilation cuts and a slew of unissued bonus tracks picked up from where they buried them by the roadside as they raced outta town at the tip of a pitchfork, this is a relative obscurity worth a scratch n sniff.

Stu Gibson

The Demonics
Hot Rod Pussy

Alien Snatch

This ten year best of from these California surf-speed n’ bird freaks covering 1993-2003 is one pure roller-breakin’ dead mans curveball that could rock-away any beach and heartbreak beat you put before it. On a seabed-swirling sugar-rush of Ramones, Dead Milkmen and Dwarves, with whom they share a fondness for nudity and masks, alongside a healthy swirling spray of similarly colossal title fetish like The Cramps – see revealed in all their greatness and glory hole holly - Drag Race In The Cemetery, Jesus Chrysler Super Stock, Demon Garage, Fuel Injected Suicide Machine and She Devils On Wheels mixing morbid comedy (‘When you’re dead / With an axe in your head’) suffused with such sad-eyed sunset remembrances resounding like early Barracudas that a grown stoned slob could sob, like a sobaway bitch. 

Stu Gibson

The Fabulous Rachel Moss Album
An Easy Action Collection

Easy Action

More than just a showcase and a primer for upcoming releases this little cutie not only takes yer hat but scratches your back and puts a bag in your hand, leading you underneath the counter to a treasure trove that penetrates the underworld of rock’s past and slides you into some future now with Teasing LuLu and new uk spaced out warpiers Tomorrow plus solo soul-salvers Judie Collings and scabrous old essential dispensers of ragged sagacity like ex-Damned Lord Brian James and his hallowed scalpelling Telecaster alongside Iggy, Stooges, Kusworth, Lou Reed, Steve Marriott, T-Rex, Sylvain, showing these priceless wares with a love and passion of the performers they retch up. Gobbling old labels voraciously like a benevolent beast along the lines of Cherry Red, and Charly they already have Stooges, T-Rex, MC5 and Sonics Rendezvous boxes notched on their bedsteads and upcoming Lords and Nikki Sudden ones plus issuing Kusworth solo, it’s waving a big fucking polka dot scarf at you so step into the breeze, count your change and indulge that yet to be pleased.

Stu Gibson

Sonics Rendezvous Band
Live, Masonic Auditorium
 
Alive

The fabled band featuring Stooges drummer Scott Asheton and led by MC5er Fred ‘Sonic’ Smith – who only ever released one single, the voluptuous space trucking car-park grind of City Slang - are caught here on the same day the Pistols famously put the knee in their punk spectacle at that Winterland gig. It’s not documented and what’s the point for you can be pretty sure that not many in this Detroit venue left feeling cheated. This little seven song disc slips out of the self-titled Easy Action box-set and is a meeting of Stooge-death-strut fuckery with Smith’s classic wopbamboom song writing that blazes through Back In The USA cuts like the ever restless Shakin’ Street but stretched into monster-truck chewing mashes reaching out and summoning Sun Ra into the stratospheres. Modestly massive.

Stu Gibson

The Lords Of Altamont
Presents “The
Altamont Sin”
Easy Action

With a title surely winning favours from the grand old dame of punnery if ever there was one, ‘tis like they were sat around all this time scratching like meth-fiends mired in a nettle bush in desperation to use it as their third album title. If they were then they also scraped up a furious bush-rustler of a record amidst the earth’s herpes and halitosis, hewn from garage rock’s cavernous n’ much itched alleycat scratch, one not so virulent since Zen Guerilla flew too close to the sun, and Thee Hypntoics were, well, a bit too daintily English. No bunch of abscess-sucking obsessives with barren bandoleros in rock recess these miscreants, but high plains drifters juiced up on bulbous-jousting ju-ju n’ kicking karmic ass, laughing like hyenas in every hellhound’s hollow-eyed hang-dog stare, grinding their snouts into new street currency to scare your family and most fucked-up foes with. Who needs bullets? All you need is love? Naah, San Fran or not, all you need is fug and this plug-ugly torrent of swamp-grime and wheels-spinning gas n’ grease guzzler. Bad-trip bards, Johnny Too Bad’s, the demon brothers that woulda been cast by Russ Meyer had be been bulging-eyed fer big balls not big breastage, all in black biker garb wielding garage grind garrottes, screaming whore harmonicas and blues-based ballerina lurches with the shotgun blast vocals and chainsaw-cracking guitars of Johnny Stiggs DeVilla and Shawn Sonic Medina carving fatalistic scriptures of disaffection onto sarcophagi that should hold up every toilet venue and crease the walls of every party you ever thought you went to. They’re exactly the sorta band your mother warned you about, that you got into rock’n’roll, black leather n’ slack morals for, scowling out scabrous riffs that make speed outta the detritus of the cough syrups and linctuses that snot-nosed snivelling wretch-rockers sooth their shit-snivelling noses with while tagging along to parties, asking them to buy booze. Pipeline is surfed on Stygian screams on opener Intro (No Love Lost), lassoing Link Wray licks to the backseat, slyly slinking lines outta old sleeves along their leery way, these fuckers slab it to your sorry sides with a blasé way with all that is let loose and brutalized. It could be bottled more crudely but they take The Stooges’ ‘Little Doll’ and ‘1969’ into Little Hell, The Lords of the New Church’s A Gun Called Justice and honorary lord Roky Erickson’s Don’t Slander Me for dances that make Iggy appear static with stage-fright. Crank-compadres Going No Where Fast and Driving Too Fast along with the skirt-tearing title-track and Faded Black shudder-fuck any notions that their nonchalance may be anything other than acceptance (‘Haven’t got a chance and I like it’) but artifice. Acceptance like Murder City Devils’ ‘Some people are born…but some people are born to Rock’n’Roll’ or Angel City Outcasts’ no terms discussed Made For This, some records may even atone for The Cult’s previous sins, some films, such as the speed-riddled ‘Vanishing Point’ should be remade with this biker-fuck rubber-burner as the soundtrack.

Stu Gibson

Motorhead
Motorizer

SPV

It’s 2008 brother, which means it’s not 2007 anymore and also means there’s a new Motorhead studio record.

Since “Overnight Sensation” in 1996, Lemmy, Phil Campbell and Mikkey Dee have been a recording machine, putting out now seven studio albums with what has become the longest running Motorhead lineup in the band’s 30 some year history. 

While every album since then can certainly be categorized as Motorhead – let’s face it, they all sort of sound exactly the same – they’ve been all been solid, but to varying degrees.

“Motorizer” surpasses them all and quite a few of the band’s earlier r ecords, too. Opening track “Runaround Man” is the best Motorhead song in a decade. With train-like tenacity, Lemmy pounds out more lyrics per square second he ever has. Motorhead once said if they moved in next to you, your lawn would die. Well, listen to “Runaround Man,” and your brain just might because it’s that damn catchy.

“One Short Life” and “Back on the Chain” groove with Sabbath-like swagger. “Buried Alive” is pure the pure rapid-fire Mikkey Dee we’ve come to know.

Every Motorhead album has at least one tune that sounds almost exactly like “Ace of Spades.” “Rock On” fills the quota on “Motorizer.”

“English Rose” is another pure rocker ala “Born to Raise Hell.”

Motorhead is the safest bet in the CD aisle perhaps of all time. But Motorhead fans undecided on whether to shell out the cash for yet another studio album, don’t fret. “Motorizer” is another Motorhead album, but it’s more than that. It’s the best album done by the current lineup, and probably falls into the band’s top three of all time.

 B.J. Lisko

Danko Jones
Never Too Loud

Aquarius

Why Canada’s Danko Jones isn’t bigger than they are remains a mystery. They rock harder than most, and even though their material is sopping with some obvious influences, they really do make it into a sound all their own.

“Never Too Loud” was put out earlier this year and showcases some of the band’s most diverse material to date.

“Code of the Road,” “Still in High School,” “King of Magazines” and “Let’s Get Undressed” are the Danko we’ve all come to know – personal AC/DC/Kisslike anthems beat into your brain like a jackhammer.

But Danko experiments a tad on songs like “City Streets” and “Ravenous” which toss a pop feel into the mix. It ultimately works.

“Take Me Home” is an acoustic guitar rocker dedicated to the most important thing of all – Danko’s record collection. It’s an oddball at first, but really it’s not all that off the beaten path. “Forest for the Trees” noodles a little bit, but the very next track is back to classic Danko with “Your Tears My Smile.”

The album closes with the title track, which at first I though was a cover of Bon Jovi’s “Bad Medicine.” I swear the two songs start exactly the same. Regardless, it’s another classic Danko sing-a-long, and a sure-fire tune in the live set.

B.J. Lisko

Turbonegra
L’ass Cobra

Wolverine

Oh me oh my oh what a concept! What a title…! What a payload to get waylaid by!!

What can be said…’cept if you like Turbonegro you’re pretty much guaranteed a good ride from these frisky Frisco ladies, especially if you grind on the nutty Norsemen’s best, most discernibly bulbous offerings from their tender, well-talced loins like Good Head, Age Of Pamparius (yuss, the pizza one…), Don’t Say Motherfucker, Rendezvous With Anus, Prince Of The Rodeo, Erection and Denim Demon. So it ain’t as good as the original deal and they stay true to the recipe but all usual rules of cover versions can be trashed and slapped with this hot-stoking, um, masterstroke. Everything rattles n’ rolls like their compadres   And really, anyone who fails to connect the excitement at shouting about having ‘Muthafucking pizza tonight…’ in front of a huge bank of gatling gun amplification should, well, be shot like Harry Dean Stanton in Dillinger, the old ranch dude at the end of Young Guns or the Weller guy that becomes Robocop. Open up and say ‘Grrrraaaa…’ and tell these good nurses about the headaches in your pants for what is far ahead of being the nineteenth most powerful concept in rock since that Girlschool / Motorhead liaison. 

Stu Gibson

Western Promise
Running With The Saints – The Best Of…

Cherry Red

1985. Midway through Thatcher’s long, tight, hard reign cloud, cold war cocoon, miners and dockers strikes, the Troubles, inner city riots, industrial decline, or dismantling, came this scarred and sharp-tongued troupe of Irish-descent Scousers condensing the barbed wire bombsite love and passion of early Stiff Little Fingers into a driving post-punk call for response, clanking clarion horns with The Clash, Billy Bragg and that initial pulsing effervescence that propelled early U2 to now-unfortunate pinnacles. This collection of early singles and Peel Sessions is a pointed, strident picket, despite the dismal forays into reggae funk that blighted their era, but with the doleful, dolorous but soaring voice redolent of Mark Burgess of The Chameleons or a young Julian Cope, even Stuart Adamson from Big Country, they stand out as earnest, incandescent and affecting. Very reminiscent of the eighties it may be and it might be simple at this remove to cast all that politically and socially conscious militancy as right-on Socialist Worker-selling student activism but if any of the myriad yet myopic so-called indie bands put the tinny guitars, throbbing bass and machine-line drums to the grist with such conviction and surging, uplifting euphoria they’d probably have cardiacs from extreme exertion, such is the level of complacency shrouding all too many aspects of Blair’s Britain. Alas, amidst the same politico-social background, a mere few years later another sense of commitment and community saw that bands like Western Promise were trampled under flares and rousing tribal rave beats. This is one historical tract that should be studied anew.

Stu Gibson

 

 

  Hey, how about some fucking vinyl?
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Man, this Ion USB turntable is a pain in the balls most of the time. I didn’t used to have to hunt for the fucking manual every time I wanted to play a record back in the good old days. Then again, we wore parachute pants in the ‘good old days’, so I guess it’s a trade-off. Anyway, here’s the glorious results from the pile of wax I just scrutinized.

The Greatest Hits/ The Tough Shits
Split 7”
Desert Island Discs

They’re called the Tough Shits, and it’s on brown vinyl. Haha! Anyways, the TS tracks sound like Johnny Thunders and the Heartbreakers. Slurry, scarf-wearing drug rock. Nice. The Greatest Hits tracks on flip sound like some groovy, if slightly unholy, cross between the Bay City Rollers and the New York Dolls. Tasty stuff. From what I gather (and by ‘gather’, I mean I glanced at the cover), this was produced by Briefs-man Steve E. Nix, and the whole thing might be the Briefs in disguise, or their cousins, or their roommates. It’s got that vibe. Good, erm, shit, man.

Black Radio/Ruling Class
Split  7”
Bootleg Booze

Split 7” that seems to be a semi-concept piece about, I think, highway murder. Black Radio are Brit brawlers who play ferocious speed-rock with gnarly metallic leads. It’s like that movie with the flying guillotines, just non-stop panic and head-chopping. Fucking crazy. Ruling Class are Swedes. They play muscle-car rock, fast n’ furious, but with a dollop of melody, I’m assuming, to bait the chicks into their car. Their death car!

Midlife Crisis
Cranked Up Really High EP (7”)
Bootleg Booze

So hey, dig this: Midlife Crisis is a supergroup comprised of Dregen from the Backyard Babies, Robban from the Hellacopters, and a coupla dudes from the Maggots and Maryslim. I didn’t realize that until I read the hype-sheet; the cover just looks like a buncha rehab-bound hard-luck types. So Midlife Crisis get together whenever-it-happens to bash out some loose-limbed, raw-boned covers of their fave punk rock songs, and there’s a quartet of them here, including, as you might have guessed from the title, Cranked Up Really High by Slaughter and the Dogs, Vital Hours by The Outsiders, and…some seriously obscure shit from The Menace and FF Commando. Odds are, unless you are record collector scum, three outta four of these will sound brand new to you, and the Dogs track is suitably snarly so, you know, right the fuck on!

Palavas Surfers
Zombie 7”
Be Fast

Very swank slab of deep-blue vinyl and a sleeve that folds out like…I dunno, swinging doors. Musically, it’s pretty rocking French surfabilly sung, fittingly enough, in their mother-tongue. Even the bird-is-the-word bits are in French. So it’s educational in that respect. Not exactly ground breaking or nothin’, but if you ever wished the  Ventures were more continental, than you’re in luck.

The Steaknives
We Can’t Stand This World EP (7”)
The Lookies/Truckstop Lovechild
Split 7”
Zodiac Killer

Steaknives are Italian, which sorta surprised me, what with the scary red blood splatter on the cover. Usually it’s American bands pushing the openly-psychotic angle. Anyways, sweet pink vinyl and a quartet of creepy-crawly garage-punk that grinds away at a slack-ass pace but makes up for it’s lack of pep with some very tasty Thunders-esque guitar licks. Lotsa talk about dogs. I think they’re into the Stooges.

Truckstop Lovechild, not surprisingly, play trucker punk. Trucker punk with wailing, Gaye Bykers on Acid-y psycho-freakout guitar. It’s a fearsome combo and although their track, the Nashville Pussy-ish Thinkin’ Ain’t Drinkin’ is pretty standard stuff, something tells me these fuckers are bound for…if not glory, than at least one fuck of an album. Watch out for em. The Lookies sound like The Left, which probably means nothing to 99% of you, but seriously, they do. Stooges-inspired garage-punk looking for a fist-fight. Solid.

The Dead Ringers
I Want Out 7”
Gimmie Danger Records

The skittish, rumbling bassline on I Want Out alone makes this single worth the purchase, but the rest of its pretty bitchin’ too. SF band fueled on snot and old glam records, doing a tuneful sort of Dead Boys revamp with scorching, acid-punk guitars and vox that sound like the dude just knifed his own mother. And liked it. Awesome.

Burndowns
Self-titled
12” LP
Big Neck

Big thick chunk of pizza-sized black vinyl with a shiny little credit card inside the sleeve good for one free digital download of this here LP. Swell! As for the rock? Burndowns are Pittsburgh dudes, sorta punk, a few metal riffs, mostly slop-house garage spew that reminds me, vaguely, of the Meatmen without all the phony baloney bullshit. I envision sofas with cigarette burns, cheap beer backwash, roommates who are always late with the rent, a greasy, much-pawed collection of Swedish Erotica on VHS. Standard loser-rock with a few dips into punk rock glory. And that’s that.

Washington Dead Cats
A Good Cat is a Dead Cat 12” LP
Be Fast

Straight outta Paris, the Washington Dead Cats are ooky-kooky psychobilly splattercats with semi-secret second lives as comic book artists and Frenchy hip-hop stars, all kindsa crazy shit. They’ve been around forever and a day as evidenced by this career-spanning LP that collects tracks from 1986-1991 on the A-side, and 2001-2007 on the b-side. What were they up to between ’91-’01, you ask? Dunno. Hip hop and comic books, I guess. Anyway, they sound very much like the Euro version of Dino Lee and the Kings of White Trash. Same predilection for mixing up b-movie themes, rockabilly, surf, Vegas-y lounge, and sweaty rock n’ roll. It’s infectiously fun stuff, Makes me wanna build my own Frankenstein monster, or something.

Sleazegrinder

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More CDs...

Load Point Pull
Down in Flames
Self-released

A long time ago, Sleazegrinder sent Jeff and me a package of stuff to review. Jeff finished all his reviews in, like, three days, and here I am with one cd left, a whole calendar year later. Talk about embarrassing...

Anyway, I should have given this one to Jeff, seeing as how he is the metalhead and I am, well, not the metalhead. But how is a girl to know that a cd with a cover done entirely in black with the band's name on fire is going to be metal? (Exactly-I should have given this one to Jeff.)

So Kansas City's Load Point Pull are pretty heavy-duty, man. All black and on fire and shit. Basslines that'll bust your windows, and that I'm-too-tough-to-actually-sing-so-I'm-just-going-to-growl-at-you Rob Zombie vocal style. Heavy as a ton of bricks, but melodic, too. I probably would have danced to "Out Of Reach" at the goth bar I frequented a bunch of years ago. So while you probably won't find this cd in heavy rotation at the Holly-household, it is not without its hard rock industrial dance metal charms. I think Jeff would probably really like it.

Holly

C.C. Voltage
A Touch Of Class...Just A Touch
Yeah Right! Records

Pay attention now, because this can get confusing: C.C. Voltage is both a man and a band. (Kind of like Sleazegrinder being a really rad dude and a rock and roll empire.) C.C. Voltage the man wears many hats, in addition to the fine white panama he sports in the liner notes. He is a respected teacher of German by day and a drunk punk  'n' roller by night, and he plays a mean game of nudie spot-the-difference. C.C. Voltage the band, hailing from Vancouver, Canada, with musicians pilfered from such lager-soaked legends as The Spitfires and The Black Halos, is, unsurprisingly, pretty much like the man: smart, unpretentious, earnest, and a hell of a lot of fun. This is fantastic power-pop punk rock, from infectious opener "Think About It" to the melodic oh-oh-oh chorus of "Remote Control" to the driven-tambourine rock that fuels "Frankfurt." A Touch Of Class...Just A Touch" is perfect for drunken summer evenings on the patio. Don't forget the umbrella in your cocktail...

Holly

Disarm
By Any Means Necessary
Imprint

Though it can be claimed that South Yorkshire is an unusual backalley for rock’n’roll jetboys n’ jeepsters to be born into, lest we forget a certain Mr Z Mindwarp hails from someplace further on up the road. Obviously, but not to their detriment, ingesting copious amounts of Scandinavian ice-berg crunching polar-rolling rock, these four tirade troubadours power-line their way through vicious vein-slicing sing-alongs with the gruff-faced, gaunt stomached greed-lust of Gordon Gecko indulging in mutual mutilation with Patrick Bateman. Snaking into your synapses like yer preferred powder of choice piled up from expense accounts they combine the brutal stomp of early Wildhearts but slash the playful pop with a surly well-articulated, intelligent (at last!) disdain and dark air shrouding what would be dancefloor beltclip slipping riffs deserving of a head flushed down the toilet with the screamo hordes sucking on

Like cross-ocean clones of Izzy and Dregen dodging dealers and that endless draft into the drudgery of the dole or dour jobs they manage here to present themselves as far more than small satellite town kids on poppers n’ pills rawk. Having seen too many classic rock pastiches (well, three but three…) this last year here’s a band at last to take the reins from the all too over-rated Babies and show the current cess-pit of so-lowly they’re-not-even-cringe-worthy-never-will-bes disintegrating the ironic Motley Crue stance of too many tiresome scenesters with their half-assed crimping with the flick of a cracked plectrum, riding some resurgent glam sleaze coaster with strictly no roller on the back of The Crue’s pitiful rehabilitation. Formulaic but fun, they’ve sheared off the shackles of their roots for an international sound, making the title somewhat ironic, it just remains to be seen if they can do the same musically, but as it stands this fucks over with a shrug any recent supposedly righteously-racked rock action the UK’s being feebly exporting in recent years.

Stu Gibson

Hanoi Rocks
The Nottingham Tapes
Cherry Red

Legendary live tapes reissued after two decades on the bootleg shelves at record fairs may be ten a penny but for catching the mighty, and mightily frazzled, Finns live in their pre-Razzle demise prime, then you may not get much better than this. They may be of similar ilk with platinum-tinged penchants for pin-eyed stares and similar silks, but fear not the paltry releases that beleaguer the legacy (for want of a better word) of Mr Johnny Thunders, like the typically tragic through wasted opportunity Thunders, Kane and Nolan DVD. Essentially a greatest hits set (with Lightning Bar Blues credited instead of Mental Beat), which in reality, it can be safely but slurringly sluttily said, is ‘all’ they were. That ‘all’ ain’t a light one either, lags n’ lushes, for beat my behind and bugger me rancid n’ wrinkly and film it in the reflection of my PVC thigh if there’s much better on this waterblue swirl than Boulevard Of Broken Dreams, Tragedy or Malibu Beach (yeah yeah, ok, Oriental Beat’s conspicuous by its fluorescent absence but testament to this celebratory shooting gallery of galaxial glam-gems is that you’ll barely notice). So quit simpering n’ simply sit around with whatever toxins you call treats and wish you could prance back and forth from a mic stand as well as Andy McCoy and Sami Yaffa, as well as mangle the intro to Up Around The Bend so well it’s a crimped, pancaked mush more like a spilt drink, then still manage to turn it into a discernible song. Yuss, it surely takes strange boys to slay such classics openly, brazenly and fucking amazingly.

Stu Gibson

Guana Batz
Rough Edges & Electra Glide In Blue
Cherry Red

These two further batventures reissued for reappraising and ravaging anew loiter in later night speakeasies than the first two more fun-pub afternoon bitter and crisps sessions Held Down To Vinyl and Loan Sharks. Though the sombre sleeve shots adorning Rough Edges signified a downplaying of the earlier jolly boys pissed on the promenade, bums out on the beach, barfing off Blackpool tower outings, their style of St. Vitus on strychnine stomp remained a more pumped up, powder-keg rockabilly, one whose fuse only got shorter on the latter lathering of lip-quivering clatter. Bucking trends by not being self-consciously psycho nor swung through the eighties parody-pop-schlop blender as some nifty neos like Reckless and The Polecats, their unique gurns and barrel-chested rampages through the bronco-buckling bop streets appealed to the flat-topped fellowship of fuckwits as well as the tightly ironed, more chart-bound slicks, Stuart Osborne’s under-rated song-writing, never mind Gretsch-charming, was never subservient to the sway to the thrashier romps and dark, dentist drill screeches gaining ground as the eighties decayed into the nineties and the psycho scene continued it’s mutant mambo.

Stu Gibson

Frantic Flintstones
Rockin’ Out / Not Christmas
Cherry Red

Still sprightly old scumbilly goat n’ rancid throat-wrecked lung-depleted mainstay Chuck Harvey here has a coupla rocketing oldies from ‘88 stomped onto one CD. Just as drug-buddy Spark from Demented Are Go lives up to his bands moniker with his scabrous tales of healthy perversions and predilections, so the Flintstones furnish   a bedrock shakin’ bop infused with the calypsodic spirits of ska that will bedevil the Wilma outta your Barney and make you stomp through the floor of your car and run it on phet-faced foot-fucked pedal power with this dry-tongue lashing of instrumentals (notably Chuck Blows A Fuse) and leer-grinning bonzo bog-brush dog killer crap-sodding soc-hop soda-jerkers like Rockin’ Bones and giant ewok-boppers What The Hell and Hot Head Baby

And don’t go thinking that half (actually over half) of this depends on how much you wanna splash out for a Santabilly album. This is called Not Christmas for a reason and so stands on its own feet awaiting any little psycho miscreant and apprentice deviant to sit on it’s knee with Bad Manners style ska (Frantic) and customary dizzying disarray at it’s dirty finger-tips dipped in disposal that King Kurt fans would gag on. So Little Town Of Bedrock is razed at rock-smoking rates, She’ll Be Coming Round The Mountain is treated to a sax-sucking mong-stomp through on Alone Again / Round Mountain and scuzz-shuffles on Just Because (NOT a Christmas song but it does mention Santa Claus, smart huh?) and Santa Claus Is Back In Town (‘Santa Claus is coming…up your dirtbox tonight’) will be helping blow the usual Christmas schmaltz up many a rockers’ sprouting smokestacks as the nights draw in…what, Chuck, no In The Grotto????

Stu Gibson

Oli Brown
Open Road

Ruf

Enjoying the patronage of, but not patronized by, blues greats like John Mayall, Buddy Guy and Walter ‘Terminal’ Trout, this young slip of a string-bend’s not been practicing the slightly-constipated-whilst-doing-the-cryptic-crossword-mid-chicken dance-face since he was in nappies, as may be presumed. A relative newcomer, plucking for slightly less than the lucky seven years, alas, you can telegraph what this is going to be like. Sure he can play a bit of geetar but it’s hard to imagine it exciting anyone other than your stereotype blues fan in a waterproof and warm pint of mild. It may be in the same vein as Stevie Ray n’ so on but twinkly fret-board skills and some vapid funk from your rhythm boys aren’t solely what translate into the Texas flood, thus this Open Road is contradictorily as narrow as the confines the blues was performed to break out of.

Stu Gibson

Pennywise
Reason To Believe
Epitaph

Ever a sucker for defiant stand and fight war cries, this not exactly highly anticipated return from the Cali-punk legends starts out on not such a wretched note as expected with (Intro) As Long As We Can. The welcome is kinda short-lived, though. From the wimpering with warm milk and cocoa under cartoon character bed clothes of One Reason and Confusion (‘I can’t believe what I have found / The world’s been turned upside down’ – there, there, dude, hang in maaan) this deserves a short-shrift unless you’re unduly desperate to own more melodic poppy speed-punk recorded in a studio far from the nearest dealer of nasal spray, positively stuffed full of tritisms (You Get The Life You Choose, Affliction which helpfully tells us we got to ‘fight – for what’s right’, I’m sure you germs’ll agree we should all be thankful for that lil gem, hell it’s gonna be my hahaha epitaph) or have been unfortunately kidnapped by the most sadistic bastard ever and have to choose between this and My Chemical Romance. It’s not quite that nauseating, it just slips past in a resiliently un-scintillating slurry but I’d need castrating if I recommended any of you co-sickos to cut this some slack. Definitely burn the opener though, and maybe Faith And Hope. Oh yeah, for all its anti-establishment blandishments, it’s released in America on MySpace Records ha ha ha, musta been some cash, nay filthy bloody fucking lucre in there, verily meriting their name. Pricksticks.

Contradictorily Stu Gibson

Various
Rockabilly And Psychobilly Mayhem – The Western Star Promo Collection
Cherry Red

Beginning as a studio helmed by Alan Wilson, mainman of psychobilly first-wavers The Sharks, Western Star has burgeoned like a ‘billy bruisers well-coagulated, coal-slag quiff since 2004. This, then, would verily be the round-up of promo clips. And an entertaining, if not wholesomely so, trip it be too. Comprised of delightfully zero-dollar budget clips of studio buffoonery (mainly from Frantic Flintstones head honcho Chuck Harvey in Chuck And The Crack-Pipes), live clips cut up by cars and malarkey in the park (the outdoor japes and escapades under English country garden glades of The Bad Detectives - possibly contenders for King Kurt’s slapstick ‘n’ tickle-billy crown - on Alligator Rosie, The Ugly Dog Skiffle Combo, who’s songs manage to mangle some beauty amongst the mirthful antics, and The Sharks hilariously awesome cover of I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For, rivalling Madness in the straight-faced stakes. Elsewhere Luna Vegas drool brilliantly, The Valentine Villains provide perhaps the best promo (if not song) alongside the triple-entry by current best-sellers Jack Rabbit Slim; Henry And The Bleeders give a bad-trip, glue-fainting nightmare glimpse into their psycho-Ted stomp, Lux a near scene-stealing, ceiling-quaking stomp on Surfin’ Bird to rival The Cramps.

Though questionable how often you’ll return to these clips, so long as you’re not expecting any high concept scenarios and / or, if any of you once respectable reprobates remembers The Dirty Strangers’ Bathing Belles clip, well, dip in and go for a dive. 

Stu Gibson

Teasing Lulu
Black Summer

Easy Action

Teasing Lulu are a two toxic terror girls aiming to add some glamour va-voom to the trite riot girl template, intending for the noughtie-woman a la PJ Harvey but coming across like Elastica’s Justine Frischmann was their New Deal advisor. Being suitably under-produced by The Stranglers’ bassist JJ Burnel is a good starting hand to flash then, which does give the nod to this being more than just tantrums over lost tutus. You want the trite girl band comparisons first, ah ok, then you may picture them as Alisha’s Attic being exorcised by latter day Babes In Toyland, quirky verses looking up the skirts of chart-friendly, indie dancefloor choking choruses on the better moments, monuments to being fucked over like belting openers, the topically titled The Ex-Factor and Waste Of Time, and cretin-crunch anthem D.I.H. I mean, face it, nothing’s gonna be as fearsome as Kat Bjelland in full heel-splitting, glass-piercing, car-scorching woman-scorned super-sexy-psycho-crone-mode, but overall they fail to inject some vital signs into their   cauldron, leaving it all tasting a bit too artificial and affected. The clunky parts clatter, the kooky parts (Lady Luck adopts a move off B52’s Planet Claire, the screech on Loser being neither cute nor scary) licking not a trace of cracked nail polish off Kate Piersson’s presumably delightful toes, neither creating any unexpected tensions and gut-crunching caresses. Like any tease it has many a moment but it doesn’t cut to the quick enough.

Stu Gibson

The Bone Machine
La Vita Finisce La Stradia No
Billysbones

Rarely it seems in the self-decrepitising pit of psychobilly / rampant rockabilly does much new come round the corner to blindside you, no matter how a-quiver they may make your head n’ hair. This masked set of miscreants are far from a vanity project for label and shop boss who in this incarnation bearing the bronco-brunting moniker of Jack Cortese. Their frantic fifties and bong-baiting, catapult-eyed boogie reels you round a wall of death and remain psychobilly in as much as this is pretty much what you’d expect The Meteors to sound like but rarely do given all the ‘only pure psychobilly’ bullshit posturing and narrow-minded prattling Fenech’s solo stuff belies. Sadistically souped-up, exhaust-splintering rockin’ is the rout of the day so expect more traces of You Can’t Catch Me (Forse Sei Gia Morto) and Rip It Up riddled with skanky demon seed adding some vibrancy to the same old psycho stew whiff.

Sounding wonderfully evocative in the Italian tongue – though sometimes so unhinged it could be a Vietnamese street market (Sono Morto seems to herald Cortese crowing that he’s ‘sold a wok…’!) – these viscious vignettes could soundtrack and disembowel the cast-list of a Lucio Fulci flick, from the Dion as deranged playboy of the twisted world, driving a clutch-less Cadillac past crooked crosses and coverless crotches, whistling I Was Born To Cry through a scaly lip-scalped mouth, or the Little Richard trapped in a chicken coop with a psychotic cock fighting the hundred years horn on Siamo La Banda Che Suona Le Tue Ossa and Una Cassa Da Morto Foderata Di Rosso swigs on your sister’s sway while swaggering into her closet and closest secrets entirely in the manner of Walk This Way…is we missing something (don’t start) or is gleefully wading through the stains smeared on Aerosmith a particular hobby ‘mongst Italy’s luna-billy bopsters (see self-crowing cockabillies The Legendary Kid Combo).

If you wanna cut to the chase of this frantic rampancy, then yeah ya could say it’s kinda Cramps-sodden but the chase being better than the catch, natch, get ye tha card and exchange yer currencies and get some of The Bone Machine stamped on your ass like the grass chomping cattle you be, for this is best recordings so far merely bolstered not bettered by a monstrously surreal slur through Big River as it carves their faces in the side of the Collosseum for a new quintessential national monument.

Stu Gibson

The Lords Of The New Church
Rockers
Easy Action

Following the Lords Prayer sets from a few years back, similarly authorized and assisted by Brian James and the rest of the gang, and as a precursor to a six-CD box-set out later this year (!!!!!!!), this set o’ alts saunters outta the vaults partnered with an(other) ’82 live show, licks it’s cracked, blood-smudged lips, stares you down into willing compliancy then kicks your ass on your way to hell, calls in the night and stretchers you down into the unhallowed and ghastly grimaces that leer through the cracks in the pantheon of rock’s pasty-featured fuck-up’s with feline grace and damn horny impertinence.

From a time when all your favourite rock stars were narcissistic narc-heads on a shoestring, this lil ol’ supergroup of banditos swooped, soared and sowed oats and swore oaths wilder and more sacrosanct than the holiest psalter, swapping punk’s gob and malice for goblets, ruffles, fetishes and whatever rough specials of the day coursed through   and chalices but never let the accelerator slip on conflict and the compulsion to contradict whether in polemics or paeans to plastered trysts.

Arch, cynical, crass, calculating, candid, cryptic, cool and just unconditionally sexier than any phet-faced, rat-eared, Sylvester The Cat on sewer-smack had any right to be, Stivney and his sallow-eyed deviants stride on sheets of black midnight humour with sultry demeanour, shallow cravings and gargantuan grotesqueries from the powder-chilling drill of Lil Boys Play With Dolls, the grandeur of I Never Believed, the so-stoned swagger of Black Girl White Girl whicha woulda 86’d The Stones offa their infamous ’72 tour along with the vaudeville vamp of Fresh Flesh. The live slip of a set is as sweetly, seedy and shambolic as the much-slaked legends say, yet when they crystallize as on the citadel sway of Russian Roulette and cataclysmic Holy War it’s evident even on the scratchiest live sweat-shaking communion that no-one has ever really followed their chain of command in exploits of disobedience and dissolution.  

Religion all night long, Lords that should never be laid, nor allowed to rest…Like a perverse Shangri-la, I cried. I danced around in my frock coats. Hear it & fucking weep… keep telling secrets…this record’s GOTTA sell...RIP

Stu Gibson

The More I See
The Unholy Feast

Transcend Media

Formed by ex-Prodigy and English Dogs guitar-eye-gouger Gizz Butt in 2002 (and featuring Sacrilege’s drummer, if anyone’s been wondering unduly), TMIS eschew most possibly expected traces from those bands, ‘cept for retaining the high maintenance tumult of their assault-savvy approaches. This second album again launches an articulate ultra-tech metal crusade on several fronts akin to early Maiden’s punk-puke-phoria re-moulded for The Matrix millennium, confident discourses like a commando squad at the peak of their calibre coupled with the intelligence of the scientists who concocted the clinical stimulants on which the cavalry charge through the gargantuan waves of guitar-grit.

Not unlikely to have a place chartered on Ride The Lightning or Master Of Puppets in business class, Metallica being a band directly influenced by the Dogs way back when Lars still played tennis and Gizz was a teen. With this banquet of viscerally mellifluous but muscle-bound classic thrash, may the circle be unbroken indeed. Another strike against would be usurpers of late last century for practitioners of metal malevolence everywhere. 

Stu Gibson

The Stupids
Violent Nun / Peruvian Vacation / Retard Picnic / Complete BBC Peel Sessions

Boss Tuneage

Instigators, possibly, of the UK hardcore skatepunk scene, forming after doing the eighties version of free jumping down the stairs at their local multi-storey car-park in Milton Keynes then listening to Black Flag and The Replacements Stink a lot while sniffing glue and each others shoes and munching mushrooms, not even hallucinogenic ones, just bad, old, manky mushrooms (perhaps, anyway, I lost the cheat sheets and the internet’s down at time of writing), mixed with mucus to make ‘em stretch further. Existing for just a few short years sometime round the mid-late 80’s, this long abandoned wealth of recorded output is now reissued (in deluxe trend-adhering digipack no less!) with a wonderfully stupid amount of bonus material, demos, lives and stuff as Coolest Retards and Frankfurter, which only shows how short they were in their original form, more like Dead Kennedy’s In God We Trust E.P. Silly, nonsensical and gloriously, joyously absurd. Largely interchangeable but having three of the best album titles in the cosmos ever should tempt some taste buds and loose some ears on this slew of open season butthole surfer-ama well worth congratulating flatulatingly.

Stu Gibson

I Hate Kate
Embrace The Curse
DR2
Demolition

An earnest entreat in both name and title set to the sort of simpering indie angst that these days passes for unslakable thirsts for new terrains. Fresh off the conveyor belt from Calanywhere are this perky indie-pop trio, with bleeps and whirls masking the bleats and yerlps. The Killers with more guitars and a writer who obviously spends copious amounts of time masturbating vigorously to Muse and old Brit-pop lags like The Longpigs while mourning the demise and lack of critical and commercial acclaim ceded to The Bravery. If that makes your ring twitch propelling you future-wards with the lavish abandonment of the until recently chronically constipated, then tuck in and feast, fuckers. It’s said success is limbering up in the wings. As Mudhoney sang ‘You Got It…Keep It Outta My Face.’ 

Stu Gibson

J.P. McDermott And Western Bop
Last Fool Here

Shower Tone

In the claustrophobically cloistered worlds of rockabilly and vintage-togged rock’n’roll, stepping out with nary a misplaced hair but a well-vented set of toe-trouncing woes of this tank-track crushing calibre is a feat well worth festering. 

Replete with the heartache chasin’ twists of classic honky-tonkers far more than any mere western-shirted retread of the type that takes attention to authentic detail over attrition of art and soul, it’s like this timeless record’s five-year gestation period was spent in a saloon opening the sluice-gates and inhaling sorrows on the wind whilst evading deliverance from the Elvis evil lycanthropic bop.  

Lurking starch-collared and square-shouldered, the slew of self-compositions snuck in stand as equals amidst the plentiful covers. The vicious Gene Vincent lip-curls masking breathless splutter-lungs on My Damn Baby and Coulda Shoulda Woulda (‘I woulda been married if I hadn’t’ve been true…’) could cause consumption among staples like the late-dawn Sun-session stomp through Johnny Cash’s Cry Cry Cry. Proffering sly grins and shrugs to ghostly laments Not Enough Of You and the title tune, they give a haunting glimpse of what one Buddy Holly may have bequeathed to the beat had he not been dealt out by fate. Last fool, maybe - nobody’s, definitely.

Stu Gibson

Last Train Home
Last Good Kiss

Corazong

Ten years down the tracks of rain-swept, furrow-browed lonesome city blues, it’s perhaps unsurprising, given his previous career carving up Washington’s nightlife as a critic, that the head of the homestead, Eric Brace, can delineate slices of heartbreak like a noir film detective. This slickly cinematic, reflective journey quickly leaves the raucous rancour of the opening title track for confinement on solitary streets, rail carriages and coffee shop sofas, but for all the impressively daubed auras of slightly stilted grandeur and late-night eloquence on lingering love, this never really connects. Content in a self-contained Crowded House, making even the allusive intricacies of Can’t Come Undone and May almost distastefully bland, initial suggestions of amorous woe regaled over rollicking rhythms and shuffling asides of barely concealed condescension - however polite and debonair – end up meandering in dinner party music, sipping red wine from correctly shaped – and held – glasses. The smooth melancholy of Flood peers into similar still waters as the Cowboy Junkies but overall the polished, urbane settings blur into the soporific spectre of pop-chart, smock-clinging chirpers perched atop bar stools with but a drink of bottled water, showing a case of subtlety signalling a change to the timetable. 

Stu Gibson

Regurgitator
Love And Paranoia

Valve

Y’know when you identify with an anti-hero, like Patrick Bateman in American Psycho and you sit around n’ discuss how you could do similar with greater pleasure, it usually happens after walking round Camden or Manchester, actually, thinking about it does the job really. This is one of those moments but set to music and makes you want to hunt down that Flowers guy from The Killers and construct a case that the cast of CGI or that Pathology film would never be able to get a bead on. Milking the sour tit of electro toss, wanking the last dregs of woe from the mass emo irritant, inserting little slivers of retro classics from Amadeus to Rasputin, Cool For CatsPulp without any prescience, hell, even the sodding nauseating New Order are tossed in there as well, hell, it’s like they’ve gone to the cash-point to withdraw some supposed ‘cool’ to get on a teen-flick soundtrack. I bag the killer role.

Stu Gibson

Sebastian Bach
Angel Down

Demolition

Ever regaling any world that would listen with his true metal credentials, Mr Bach seems to have spent eighteen plus years trying to atone for hand-wringing ballad sans balls I’ll Remember You and helped up the ladder by hanging out with Bon Jovi. On the back of rehab, reality TV troubles and so on is this an album of bitter bite-backs and kitten claws at dawn? Nope, not really, unless you see something in Our Love Is A Lie, Stabbin’ Daggers, Negative Light, Take You Down With Me and so on. So the guy always had a screw loose beyond vacuous self-obsession but he sure can shriek and that very, however scant, fact drags late eighties riffs from the sunset in a 4x4 loaned off Ted Nugent onto heavier street corners. He should be put under Alice’s guillotine with a blade fashioned by the yakuza for American Metalhead though the ironic post-metal brigade will die for it, for all the metal-talk Bach has a well-conditioned commercial head of hair as gets all Maiden with legs akimbo on You Don’t Understand, and squashed into the middle and end are execrable REO Speedwagon for the noughties (Live And Die and the freakishly Pete Cetera X-Factor contender on Falling Into You) that should be trampled with undue haste, lest they appears on a Kate Winslut soundtrack like some sub-Aerosmith schlop-out. Besides the selling point for his

UK crew of an extra DVD, there is more to this album than the main selling point that three tracks feature his compadre and patron that is one WAxl Rose (on the elegantly ridiculous (Love Is) A Bitchslap) on backing squawk and grimace.

Stu Gibson

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