This latest barrack-room brawler from The Briggs shows that they’re slowly acquiring the songs to match their unassailable spirit, yet they still spend too much time in the departure lounge. While there’s no mistaking the anthemic value of the cartoon caped crusading title track, ‘Song Of Babylon’ or the blue collar epitaph ‘Common and Unknown’ the songs, alas, stand alone for the wrong reasons, being uninvolving and tending to flinch in the face of engagement. Slumbering by-the-numbers street-level sludge that leaves a few dots unjoined and exasperatingly fails to enjoin the listener to anything other than the apathy they rightly rail against. A shame, as it’s a case of all the component parts been there, it’s just that they’re all out of solder, sockets or spanners, rather than just being useless. Blocked cistern syndrome in need of further plunging.
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- Stu Gibson