'Chasin' shattered dreams from the holes in your head...'
 - M16's, 'Tumble Down'

This anitpodean amphetamine atrophied amp-blower surges it's way across continents and oceans from those Prehistoric lands of Perth, Western Oz not Scotland. But there's a whole slew of wild highland attitude and aggression that was first shoved up the asscrack of the asinine soft and prog rock pussies in the seventies by AC/DC. Similarly all three of these bands are setting up beachheads in your record piles, breaching gaps where all these short leather jacketed, two tone colour obsessed derivatives used to be in complacency. Overall, The Volcanics settle the debt for this old chap, making you stomp the Jagger chicken dance that is about the best thing that Pelle Penis breath from The Hives does while almost making your head burst apart like The Increcible Hulk's shirt with Fast Eddie Clarke wolverine guitar, particularly on the early Motorhead crater quakers 'Hold It Down' and 'Gettin' Round'. Like a neat single malt, just purely and simply glistening, sparkly, like a Gretsch Sparklejet even, classic garagerawkpoppunk, not distinctly unlike Scandinavian righteous rightful heirs to garage rawk thronedom The Sewergrooves, moreso as the vocalists, somewhat oddly, share similar styles.

Of a historic note perhaps The M16's open with a cover of 'Television Addict', apparently a rarity by a wee band called The Victims, members of who went on to be in Hoodoo Gurus, Scientists and Beasts of Bourbon. The rest of the tracks are as good, if not actually rather better, with a less pure rawk'n'roll edge to thesquall but a more literate slant with traces of Long Ryders, Green On Red, even a touch of goth grandeur under there that all comes to a raging peak with 'Remains' and 'Too Much, Too Much' is a more rockin', more unbridled Scorchers.

Fourstroke are the least thrilling buncha ne'er do wells on here, so are aptly stuck on the end. However, all is not lost, as 'No Dying In The Dark' opens with a riff that fell out of Tony Iommi's nose in 1974. Unfortunately it sort of ruminates more than rumbles...maybe The Volcanics could give them their dealers number. A bit dour and over earnest, coming from all the good places but never quite hits the spot, cut too many times if you like. 'September Action' starts to turn things around with a patented Malcolm / Angus riff of 'Back In Black' calibre that then lollops into a riff that even Ritchie Blackmore would have thought preposterous in 1971. Perhaps the thought of what he'd later unleash caused him to sit gibbering under his wizards hat evermore. Really. Would be amusing if not so bloody boring. A shame to end on a sour note but Volcanics and M16's are well worth sticking your snout in the trough of, unless you're a diehard stoner.