Gold Blade – Strictly Hardcore (Thick)

Style counts, ya know. You might’ve forgotten that in these days of shrugging, come-as-you-ain’t post-cool, but the truly hip know the score. And Gold Blade are nothing if not truly hip. They are ruthless street thugs led by a barking mad tyrant, dressed up in tailored suits and stolen jewelry, who learned all their manners from James Bond movies and all their methods of mayhem from old American cop shows. They are Great Britain’s finest sons and it’s greatest shame in equal measure, the essence of pile-driving, full-contact rock and roll distilled into one precision killing machine, a supersonic hand grenade that explodes in a flurry of glitter and adrenaline, and they cannot be stopped, no matter what. Not that you’d want them to.

“Strictly Hardcore” is Gold Blade’s first ‘proper’ US release, a comp that culls the hottest, hardest tracks from their first three UK albums, including the rabid gospel-funk get down of “Soul Power”, the swank and roll shuffle of “Who Was the Killa”, the glam-powered hard rock crunch of “AC/DC”, and the revolution-ready rage n’ roll screamalong of the title song. This is, of course, no excuse to not track those down (97’s Home Turf, ‘98’s Drop the Bomb, 2002’s Do U Believe in the Power of Rock and Roll?), because there are important pieces of the puzzle, crucial clues and hidden messages in ‘em that ain’t here, but this is a good place to start. Gold Blade’s sound is often called ‘punk’, but that just sounds like a fuckin’ insult when you’re operating at this level of effectiveness- sure, there’s echoes of the Pistols and the Dead Boys and the Clash in their songs, but there’s steel-jawed odes to all of rock n’ roll’s greats, from Chuck Berry to AC/DC to the Love Reaction in here, and that doesn’t even cover the James Brown supersoul swagger or the block-party, Sly Stone funkadelica that runs through their veins like ice water. Basically, the idea here is that Gold Blade have got it all, the total package, and when yr caught in their grips, it really is hard to imagine that their ever was, or will ever be, another band in the world besides Gold Blade. Led by the irrepressible fire breather John Robb, and rife with action men with names like Johnny Skullknuckles and Pete Gorgeous, the Blade are cold-hearted killers, plain and simple, only they wield guitars instead of Tommy guns. Lucky for us. Even luckier is the appearance of this much needed Yankee indoctrination to their Constitution of the Unites States of The Almighty Rock and Roll Shakedown. You don’t wanna sit on the fence about this one, citizen. Heed the call, chase the dragon, live the dream…for now on, it’s Strictly Hardcore, or it’s nothin’ at all.